Unionized workers at Samsung Electronics Co yesterday declared an indefinite strike to pressure South Korea’s biggest company to accept their calls for higher pay and other benefits.
‘Thousands of members of the National Samsung Electronics Union launched a temporary, three-day strike on Monday, but the union yesterday announced an indefinite strike, saying that the management was unwilling to negotiate.
Samsung Electronics says there have been no disruptions to production.
Photo: AFP
“Samsung Electronics will ensure no disruptions occur in the production lines,” a Samsung statement said. “The company remains committed to engaging in good faith negotiations with the union.”
However, in a statement posted on its Web site, the union said it has engaged in unspecified disruptions on the company’s production lines to get management to eventually come to the negotiating table if the strikes continue.
The union would first target a smaller 8-inch production facility that relies more on human workers, before it targets high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production in Pyeongtaek.
“We are confident of our victory,” the union statement said.
It did not say how many of its members would join the extended strike.
The union earlier said that 6,540 of its members had said they would participate in the earlier, three-day strike.
That would represent only a fraction of Samsung Electronics’ total workforce, estimated at about 267,860 globally. About 120,000 of them are in South Korea.
Earlier this year, union members and management held rounds of talks on the union’s demand for higher wages and better working conditions, but they failed to reach agreement. Last month, some union members collectively used their annual leaves in a one-day walkout that observers said was the first labor strike at Samsung.
About 30,000 Samsung workers are reportedly affiliated with the National Samsung Electronics Union, the largest at the company, and some belong to other, smaller unions.
Investors remain largely unfazed, analysts said.
The market is focused on how quickly Samsung is able to win approval from Nvidia Corp to supply HBM, and has “little interest in the strike,” Eugene Investment & Securities Co’s research head Lee Seung-woo said.
It is also difficult to assess what the impact would be on earnings, as a potential production disruption might drive up chip prices, he said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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