Samsung faces strike by nearly 48,000 union workers

Nearly 48,000 Samsung employees in South Korea, who represent 38 percent of the company’s workforce in the country, plan to walk out on May 21 for an 18-day strike. The company and its largest union were in negotiations, and union leader Choi Seung-ho said his organization had accepted the final proposal presented by a government mediator. However, the strike continues after the parties failed to reach an agreement on an important issue: bonuses.

The union is calling on Samsung to remove the cap on workers’ bonuses, which are equivalent to 50 percent of their annual salary. Additionally, Samsung is pushing to spend 15% of its annual operating profit on employee bonuses. Samsung is currently the world’s largest DRAM maker by revenue and has recently reported record revenues and profits, driven primarily by its memory business. For the first quarter of 2026, the division that includes its memory business reported an operating profit of 53.7 trillion KRW ($35.63 billion). This accounts for the majority of the company’s total operating profit of KRW57.2 billion ($37.96 billion) for the quarter.

Most of the striking workers are in the company’s memory division, so the walkout could disrupt operations at the company’s biggest revenue source. Workers could win massive bonuses worth millions of dollars if Samsung agreed to the union’s demands, but the company called the union’s conditions “unacceptable.” It said in a statement that the reason an agreement could not be reached was that “accepting the union’s excessive demands would undermine the fundamental principles of running the company.” The union argued that workers at Samsung’s rival SK Hynix received bonuses three times higher than last year.

Even though the union will continue its strike, Samsung managed to convince the court to grant it an injunction. The court asked the union to force 7,087 workers to report to work during the strike in order to keep some of its production facilities operating. That said, the situation could still change by Thursday. Samsung said it “will only abandon dialogue at the last moment” and that “there must be no strikes under any circumstances.” South Korean Labor Commissioner Park Soo-keun said the government was ready to intervene at any time if the parties decided to return to the negotiating table.