Samsung Electronics Labor and Management to Resume Wage Negotiations on the 23rd Amid 'First Strike Since Establishment'

Decision to Resume Wage Negotiations After Two Weeks of General Strike

Samsung Electronics management and the largest labor union, the National Samsung Electronics Labor Union, will resume wage negotiations on the 23rd. This comes fifteen days after the union began a general strike on the 8th.

According to industry sources on the 19th, both labor and management, who resumed talks that afternoon, agreed to hold wage negotiations at the Giheung Nano Park negotiation venue on the 23rd.

In the wage negotiations that have continued since early this year, the parties failed to narrow their differences, ultimately leading to an extreme situation described as the "first strike in Samsung Electronics' history." It is known that management stated at the third post-adjustment meeting of the Central Labor Relations Commission held before the strike that the "average wage increase rate of 5.1%" (base increase rate 3.0% + performance increase rate 2.1%) cannot be altered.

Earlier, Samsung Electronics and the labor-management council had set the average wage increase rate at 5.1% in March. Meanwhile, the union initially demanded an average wage increase rate of 6.5%, but after declaring the general strike, proposed a 5.6% increase. The union is also demanding one day of guaranteed union founding leave, improvements to the performance bonus system, and compensation for economic losses due to the strike.

So far, the union has held rallies at key business sites such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to cause "strike disruptions." However, the number of participants in the rallies has decreased from several thousand at the start of the general strike to around 100.

Separately from the resumption of negotiations, the union will hold a rally at Giheung Sporex on the 22nd. The union reported that the number of participants who have applied to attend the rally has exceeded 1,500.

Samsung Electronics stated, "We will strive to establish a mutually beneficial labor-management relationship through continuous dialogue with the union."