Thousands of employees at South Korea’s Samsung Electronics returned to work this week after they didn’t win major concessions from the tech giant following a strike.
Last month, the unionized workers had declared they were going on a strike that would last indefinitely. It marked the first action that the unions had taken in the history of the company, which is one of the larger computer chipmakers in the world.
There are about 6,500 unionized workers who went on strike, but they only make up a small portion of the entire union membership, and an even smaller portion of the total global workforce for Samsung.
Lee Hyun Kuk, who serves as the Nationwide Samsung Electronics Union’s vice president, said most of those workers had returned to their spots on Monday.
The union has been in talks with Samsung for the last few months, seeking increases in salary, bonuses as well as vacation days. They carried out a strike for one day in June as sort of a warning sign, before starting their most recent walkout last month.
But, Samsung never wavered from its position, saying that its global operations wouldn’t be affected by the union’s strike.
The leaders of the union ultimately issued a return-to-work order last week because of the effect that the long strike was having on them — since they weren’t being paid while they were out.
The union has a separate fund to help employees who are on strike, and it totals about $60,000. The union didn’t say if it used any of those funds during this latest strike.
On Thursday, the union’s president, Son Woo-mok, told members:
“Twenty-five days into the strike, and we have nothing in our hands yet. I feel responsibility as the union leader that we haven’t brought about any results to the union members who have been participating in the strike while going without pay.”
There are 31,000 members in the union, and they said that they were going to hold blitz walkouts, or guerrilla strikes, to continue to put pressure on Samsung. They didn’t disclose how many of those strikes were being planned or how frequently they would take place.
As Son said:
“This is not a loss, but a change of tactics.”
Leaders of the union decided to hold a news conference outside of the house of Lee Jae-yong, the chairman of Samsung, in Seoul last week. They implored him to take action to help the union’s workers.
When that news conference took place, though, Lee wasn’t home but was in Paris for a meeting with other business leaders who were attending the Olympic Games there.
Samsung employs roughly 260,000 people across the world, and seemed little affected by the strike from the very small portion of workers who are members of that union.
Just last month, the company released a new lineup of electronic devices, including smartwatches and the Galaxy Fold 6 phone.
