Unionized staff of Samsung Electronics kicked off a three-day strike for higher pay on Monday, with their union pointing to additional motion ought to South Korea’s largest conglomerate proceed to fall in need of its calls for.
The National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), whose roughly 30,000 members account for nearly 1 / 4 of the agency’s South Korean workforce, additionally needs an additional day of annual go away for unionized staff and modifications to the worker bonus system.
Low participation and automatic manufacturing means the strike is unlikely to have a big impression on output on the world’s largest reminiscence chipmaker, analysts mentioned. Still, it alerts a decline in employees morale at a pivotal level within the chip trade as tech companies embrace synthetic intelligence.
The union’s first industrial motion final month concerned coordinating annual go away to stage a mass walkout, which Samsung mentioned had no impression on business exercise. The agency mentioned on Monday there was no disruption in manufacturing.
The union, which didn’t disclose final month’s strike participation ranges, mentioned 6,540 staff shall be placing this week, largely at manufacturing websites and in product improvement. It mentioned the strike consists of staff who monitor automated manufacturing traces and gear so operations could possibly be affected.
Union officers mentioned about 3,000 strikers attended a rally within the rain close to Samsung’s headquarters in Hwaseong, south of Seoul.
Union president Son Woo-mok disputed media experiences of low participation, telling Reuters that the five-year-old union didn’t have sufficient time to teach members concerning the points.
“Education about labor unions … has not been enough. But I don’t think this participation is low because our union is still young compared to other unions,” he mentioned.
Lee Hyun-kuk, the union’s vice chairman, mentioned there could possibly be additional strikes if Samsung doesn’t enhance its proposals.
Samsung’s proposals embrace flexibility in pay and annual go away situations however don’t meet union calls for of elevated pay and go away, Lee advised Reuters.
Union officers additionally need equality within the bonus system. They mentioned bonuses for rank-and-file staff are calculated by deducting the price of capital from working revenue, whereas these for executives are based mostly on private efficiency objectives.
“I was telling people that I was proud to work at Samsung, but the truth is I am not,” mentioned Park Jun-ha, 20, an engineer at Samsung’s chip packaging traces who joined the agency in January, including that he was not happy with its “opaque” bonus scheme.
The union’s membership has grown since Samsung pledged in 2020 to cease discouraging organized labor. Its rising voice is demanding consideration simply as Samsung struggles to navigate competitors in chips used for synthetic intelligence purposes, analysts mentioned.
Samsung’s share value efficiency has lagged compatriot chip rival SK Hynix, with union officers blaming Samsung’s AI woe on gradual improvement in excessive bandwidth reminiscence (HBM) chips which can be in excessive demand to be used in AI processors.
Even so, Samsung estimated a greater than 15-fold rise in second-quarter working revenue on Friday, as rebounding chip costs pushed by the AI increase lifted earnings from the yr prior’s low comparability base.
Its share value was up 0.2% in afternoon commerce on Monday after rising as a lot as 1.72% earlier within the session to its highest since January 2021. Last week, it jumped 6.9% on preliminary quarterly earnings that exceeded analyst estimates.
Source: www.dailysabah.com