Samsung Electronics workers stage one-day walkout strike
For now, the one-day strike is a show of force by employees and shouldn’t hurt production.
Samsung Electronics workers are on strike. Reports indicated the Nationwide Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) which has roughly 28000 members, or one-fifth of Samsung’s workforce, walking out of the job on Friday 07/06/2024. This is the first workers strike Samsung has experienced.
The walkout is specifically in Samsung’s chip division, which manufactures RAM and NAND flash chips, flash drives, processors, camera sensors and more. Depending on the current quarter, Samsung is often the worlds largest chip maker by revenue, largely thanks to the division. One would be hard-pressed to find an electronic product without some kind of Samsung chip in it.
As you might expect, the union wants higher pay. Samsung workers get as much as 30% of their total pay as a bonus. There were no bonuses last year. The UnionVP told reporters, “It feels like we’ve taken a 30 percent pay cut”. The average pay for a union member is about $60000 per annum before bonuses.
Officially, this is a one-day strike, so it’s not expected to hurt Samsung’s production output much. For now, this is more of a show of strength to get Samsung’s attention. Samsung reported a profit of $1.4 billion from its chip division in Q1 this year.
If this isn’t resolved, who knows what exactly would happen to the tech industry during a long-term Samsung strike. Because Samsung’s hardware components are so widely used in tech, the negative implications could be far reaching.
