Samsung employees striking for better working conditions and higher pay held a massive rally in South Korea on Monday — as their action against the company continues into its third week.
About 1,200 workers from the National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) held a rally and marched along the Giheung campus in Yongin, South Korea, according to the Associated Press.
The action came after the union and Samsung held initial wage negotiation talks on Friday, Bloomberg reported.
NSEU workers announced an indefinite strike on July 8 when a previous walkout failed to secure the workplace gains its members are fighting for.
Although the union represents more than 30,000 employees, it was not clear how many went on indefinite strike. Still, the current strike is the largest in the technology company’s history.
Samsung expects its second-quarter revenue to rise more than 1,450% year-over-year thanks to an AI boom. It also reported a 10-fold jump in profits for the first three months of 2024. But NSEU said workers aren’t seeing increases in pay despite the record returns.
Many of those on strike work at Samsung’s foundry, producing some of the most advanced computer chips in the world, AFP reported.
Samsung is also notoriously hostile to unions and has little experience negotiating with its own workers, experts say.
“If Samsung workers succeed in this undertaking, it will empower the rest of South Korea’s labor,” professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo Vladimir Tikhonov told AFP.