Samsung Electronics workers will go on strike from July 8-10, union leader says

By Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) -A union of workers at Samsung Electronics in South Korea has called a strike for July 8-10, a union official said on Tuesday, as it steps up industrial action against the country’s most valuable company.

The union is determining how many workers will join the strike, the employee told Reuters by phone.

Union leader Son Woo-mok said on Monday night that the union wants a more transparent system for bonuses and time off and wants the company to treat it as an equal partner.

Samsung declined to comment on the union’s strike plan.

Its share price was unaffected, rising 0.1% in morning trading versus a 0.7% drop in the benchmark price index.

Union membership rose rapidly after Samsung committed in 2020 to stop discouraging the growth of organized labor.

The strike itself is unlikely to have a major impact on chip production as most of the production at the world’s biggest memory chip maker is automated, two analysts told Reuters.

But any impact will ultimately depend on how many people who operate chip factories participate and for how long, said senior researcher Kim Yang-Paeng of the Korea Institute of Industrial Economics and Trade.

“Chip production cannot proceed with replacing workers” if the people operating the automated machines leave for a long period “due to the specificity and experience of the job,” Kim said.

Last month, workers en masse took annual leave on the same day, in what was effectively the union’s first industrial action. At the time, Samsung said there was no impact on production or commercial activity. The strikers worked mainly in downtown offices rather than factories, analysts said.

“This planned strike marks a turning point in Samsung’s history of non-union management. This can be seen as a decline in Samsung employee loyalty… caused by disappointing wages and salaries compared to Samsung’s rivals,” it said an analyst from Seoul. on Tuesday, declining to be identified because details of the strike were unknown.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee; writing by Ju-min Park; editing by Lincoln Feast and Christopher Cushing)