Samsung Electronics workers announce ‘indefinite’ strike

Seoul, South Korea. Unionized workers at Samsung Electronics declared an indefinite strike on Wednesday to pressure South Korea’s largest company to accept their demands for higher wages and other benefits.

Thousands of members of the Samsung National Electronics Union launched a three-day temporary strike on Monday. But the union said Wednesday it was announcing an indefinite strike, accusing management of being unwilling to negotiate. Samsung Electronics says there have been no interruptions in production.

“Samsung Electronics will ensure that there are no disruptions to 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 website, the union said it had engaged in unspecified disruptions to the company’s production lines to eventually get management to the negotiating table if the strikes continue.

“We are confident in our victory,” the union statement said.

The union’s statement did not say how many of its members would join the extended strike. It previously said 6,540 of its union members had said they would participate in the previous three-day strike.

That would represent just a fraction of Samsung Electronics’ total workforce, estimated at around 267,860 globally. About 120,000 of them are in South Korea.

Earlier this year, union members and management held rounds of talks over the union’s demand for higher wages and better working conditions, but failed to reach an agreement. In June, some union members collectively used their annual leave in a one-day strike that observers said was the first labor strike at Samsung Electronics.

Some 30,000 Samsung workers are reportedly affiliated with the Samsung National Electronics Union, the company’s largest, and some belong to other smaller unions.

In 2020, Samsung boss Lee Jae-yong, then the company’s vice president, said he would stop cracking down on employees’ attempts to organize unions, while expressing remorse over his alleged involvement in a massive 2016 corruption scandal that saw him ousted. to the president of the country.

The company’s anti-union practices have been criticized by activists for decades, although labor actions at other companies and in other sectors of society are common in South Korea.

Thousands of South Korean interns and residents have been on strike since February, protesting a government plan to dramatically increase medical school admissions.