SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Samsung Electronics union members declared an indefinite strike Wednesday, putting pressure on South Korea’s largest company to meet demands for higher wages and other benefits.
Thousands of members of the Samsung Electronics National Union began a three-day temporary strike on Monday. But the union announced Wednesday that it was declaring an indefinite strike, accusing management of being unwilling to negotiate. Samsung Electronics says there were no production interruptions.
“Samsung Electronics will ensure that there are no disruptions to our production lines,” a Samsung statement said. “The company is committed to negotiating in good faith with the union.”
But the union said in a statement on its website that it was disrupting the company’s production lines in an effort to force management to come to the negotiating table if the strike continued.
“We are confident of our victory,” the union statement said.
The union statement did not say how many union members would participate in the extended strike. The union previously said 6,540 members had said they would participate in the previous three-day strike.
This is just a fraction of Samsung Electronics’ total workforce, estimated at about 267,860 worldwide, of which about 120,000 are in Korea.
Earlier this year, union members and management held several rounds of talks over the union’s demands for higher wages and better working conditions, but failed to reach an agreement. In June, some union members used their annual leave to strike for a day, in what observers said was the first labor strike at Samsung Electronics.
About 30,000 Samsung workers are known to be members of the National Samsung Electronics Union, the company’s largest union, while some are members of other, smaller unions.
In 2020, then-Samsung Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong expressed regret for his role in the massive corruption scandal that led to the ouster of the president in 2016 and vowed to stop suppressing attempts by employees to form unions.
The company’s union-busting practices have been criticized by activists for decades, but labor strife is common in other companies and other sectors of society in South Korea.
Thousands of South Korean interns and residents have been on strike since February to protest government plans to drastically increase medical school admissions.
