South Korea: The staff at Samsung Electronics, a major global smartphone maker and high-end semiconductor producer, have gone on strike for the first time after a six-month campaign for better pay.
The National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), which is led by Son Woo-mok and represents tens of thousands of workers, reported that on Friday, employees were using their paid leave rights concurrently.
Since January, Samsung and the unions have been locked in salary negotiations. This year, the corporation has proposed a 5.1 percentt pay increase; however, the union has stated that it is seeking an extra day of annual leave in addition to clear performance-based bonuses.
Samsung declared on Friday that there had been no impact on output and that it had been “diligently engaging in negotiations and will continue to do so.” The company’s chips are utilized in generative AI, which also uses AI hardware from top suppliers like Nvidia.
The company claimed in a statement that “the paid leave usage rate on June 7 is lower than that of June 5 last year,” which, like Friday, was positioned between a public holiday and a weekend.
Samsung Electronics is the leading subsidiary of Samsung Group, the largest family-controlled conglomerate in South Korea, which is Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Strong sales of its flagship Galaxy S24 smartphone and higher semiconductor prices helped it disclose at the end of April a roughly ten-fold increase in first-quarter operating profit to 6.61 trillion won ($4.85 billion).
Although the company produces a sizable portion of the world’s supply of high-end chips, Taiwan-based market research firm TrendForce stated that the strike won’t have an impact on output because it affects personnel at the company’s headquarters rather than those who work on the production lines.
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