More than 28,000 employees of South Korea’s Samsung Electronics will stage a one-day walkout next week over demands for better pay and benefits.
The National Samsung Electronics Union announced the June 7 strike date Wednesday during a live-streamed news conference. The walkout would be the first-ever employee strike against the tech giant if it goes ahead.
The union has been negotiating with Samsung management since January over a new contract. A union spokesperson said during the live-streamed conference that it had accepted the company’s proposed pay raise, but said the union also wanted one additional holiday along with a transparent system of performance-based bonuses.
A spokesperson for Samsung Electronics issued a statement saying it would continue talks with the union.
Samsung Electronics is the flagship subsidiary of the Samsung Group, the largest of the family-owned conglomerates that dominates South Korea’s economy. It is the world’s leading maker of memory chips and one of the world’s biggest makers of smartphones. Observers believe the one-day strike could lead to a possible general strike at some point, which could negatively affect the global supply chain of high-end electronics.
Samsung Electronics had prevented its employees from unionizing for decades until 2020, when vice-chairman Lee Jae-yong was prosecuted for bribery.
