Thousands of South Korean workers employed by electronics and tech giant Samsung, one of the world’s largest smartphone and AI chip makers have gone on indefinite strike after the management of the company failed to respond for requests for discussions on pay and conditions.
Workers formed the National Samsung Electronics Union representing 30,000 staff – about a quarter of Samsung workers in South Korea. Samsung Electronics has a total workforce estimated at 268,000 globally across 74 manufacturing sites and sales outlets.
There are about 120,000 workers in South Korea. Workers are described as ‘sub-contractors’. Samsung Electronics Service is a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics and relies on in-house subcontractors who are managed by Samsung.
The Samsung union is affiliated to the Korean Metal Workers Union.
Samsung has a long history of anti unionism, including classic union busting strategies including setting up yellow union (company run non independent unions), and threats of violence and intimidation.
The current strike started as three days of action but escalated after management failed to respond to proposals for negotiations from the union.
Workers are demanding 3.5% increase in base salary and a day off to mark the union’s founding.
Currently 6,500 workers have been taking part in strikes and the union was holding training sessions to organise more workers to join the union.
The union said production on certain chip lines had been affected with equipment running slowly.
In response Samsung said: “Samsung Electronics will ensure no disruptions occur in the production lines. The company remains committed to engaging in good faith negotiations with the union.”
Earlier this year workers held a one day strike – (using annual leave) – the first labour strike at Samsung Electronics.
The strikes come as Samsung recorded a profit of $7.5 billion (£5.84 bn) between April and June, up more than 900 per cent on last year.
The strike comes as workers digi-tech companies are organising into unions with campaigns in Coventry UK at Amazon (GMB), Google and other tech companies in the UK, (Unite, CWU) fin-tech companies such as Klarna in Sweden (Unionen) and gaming, digital and AI companies in the USA, self organised independent unions predominately company wide or site wide unions.
For more article on digi-tech union campaigns and AI in the workplace paste these links into your browser.
TUC AI Report, Employment Bill & Organising In Digital & Tech Sectors
https://medianorth.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Artificial-Intelligence-and-the-threat-to-Workers.pdf
