South Korea: chips are down as Samsung workers launch historic strike

Last week, a David-vs-Goliath struggle broke out at Samsung, the biggest Chaebol (conglomerate) in Korea, where workers launched the first indefinite strike in the company’s history.

Samsung is one of the biggest corporations in the world, and alone accounts for 20 percent of South Korea’s GDP. It is the preeminent producer of memory chips and controls 42 percent of the global market for semiconductors, a vital commodity for the production of microprocessors. Since the beginning of the year, it has reported a 900 percent rise in profits, which it projects to rise by a further 1,400 percent by the end of the year, powered by booming demand for AI technologies.

For decades, the company has wrung every last drop of profit out of its workers, with many reported violations of minimum wage and probationary worker laws, forced labour, and unfair dismissal. It has ruthlessly resisted any attempts at union organising, with its founder, Lee Byung-chul, declaring that Samsung would never allow unions “until I have [grave] dirt over my eyes”. However, the corporation was eventually forced to recognise unions in 2020, after its vice president and 25 others were jailed for illegal union-busting.

Now, on 10 July, following management's refusal to negotiate after an initial three-day walkout, the National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) has declared an indefinite strike involving 6,500 workers who are fighting against miserable working conditions and for recognition of their union. This union was only founded in 2020, and has since multiplied from three members to 30,000, representing a quarter of Samsung’s Korean workforce. Significantly, around 5,000 of those on strike work directly within the company’s semiconductor division.

Workers report a host of physical deformities resulting from the continuous, manual operation of the production line / Image: NSEU

These workers, overwhelmingly women, are demanding “not to be treated as machine components”. They report a host of physical deformities resulting from the continuous, manual operation of the production line, including degenerative arthritis, deformed fingers and carpal tunnel syndrome. Earlier this year, two workers at the Giheung plant, which is at the centre of the strike, were even exposed to nuclear radiation!

In the words of one of the striking workers: “We have to protect ourselves. The company will never protect us.”

The NSEU publicly states it aims to disrupt semiconductor production. While the bosses have tried to reassure their shareholders that work is continuing as usual, the union reports a drop in production from 80 percent to 18 percent as a result of the strike. This has major implications for the whole world economy, and shows just how much power is concentrated in the hands of this key sector of the working class.

Capitalist crisis

This strike expresses the underlying discontent that has accumulated within the tech industry and wider South Korean society for decades. The ‘miraculous’ period of growth, which transformed Korea from one of the least developed countries on the planet into a high-tech capitalist economy, is a distant memory. From an average growth rate of 6.4 percent from 1970 to 2022, the Bank of Korea now predicts a fall to 2.1 percent throughout the 2020s.

This strike expresses the underlying discontent that has accumulated within the tech industry / Image: NSEU

This stagnation has had enormous social repercussions. South Korea is facing a rampant crisis in housing, an explosion of household indebtedness, and ruthless austerity.

Despite this general crisis, the profits of the Chaebols have reached record highs as a result of ballooning microchip and AI markets. Faced with growing competition from emerging Chinese tech corporations, they are keeping up with booming demand by squeezing their workers ever harder.

Not only do South Korean workers work some of the longest hours of any OECD country, they are doing so in unsafe conditions, as the bosses cut corners around health and safety to save costs and speed up production. Between 2020 and 2023, there were more than 8,000 work-related deaths. Earlier this year, a fire at a lithium battery plant killed 22 people.

These are victims of the bosses’ bottom lines, sacrificed on the altar of capital.

Class struggle

It is no wonder then that South Korean workers have begun to move against this state of affairs. And the Samsung workers are not alone.

It is no wonder then that South Korean workers have begun to move against this state of affairs / Image: NSEU

Earlier in February, thousands of trainee doctors went on strike in protest at pay disparities within the healthcare industry. Last year, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) called a general strike of 400,000 workers against the government.

Against this swelling wave of industrial action, the Chaebols can rely on the Yoon Suk Yeol regime, which has proven itself a loyal defender of capital. Since coming into power, Yoon, who once fantasised about imposing a 120-hour work week, has waged a relentless war against the unions in order to protect the ‘competitiveness’ of Korean capitalism. Union headquarters have been raided and activists have been thrown in jail, all under trumped-up allegations of collaborating with North Korea.

During the doctors’ strike, all the government had to offer were hypocritical accusations that striking workers were “endangering patients”, with not a single word regarding the dangerous working conditions in the hospitals themselves.

The Chaebols and their political lackeys aim to break the knees of the labour movement and transform Korean workers into ‘raw material for exploitation’. But this cannot go on. The profits of the powerful Korean tech sector rest on an unstable bubble of speculative investment, coupled with the super-exploitation of thousands of workers. Meanwhile, the crisis of world capitalism puts a general downward pressure on wages and living conditions, and lays the basis for an intensification of class struggle. This strike is only the beginning.

Where is the movement going?

The strike at Samsung represents a heroic step forward for the entire South Korean labour movement. Victory would raise the sights of the entire class to their potential power, and show that the capitalist behemoths that rule South Korea can be taken on and beaten.

The union has made a bold start by extending to indefinite action, but to advance, it needs to bring out the rest of the workforce. So far, only 20 percent of the union is out on strike, and the NSEU is just one of five unions organised within Samsung, albeit the largest.

The NSEU represents an enormously powerful section of the South Korean working class / Image: NSEU

In the first three days of action, the union made a bold splash with a rally of 2,000 strikers. Subsequent rallies, however, have failed to keep up the momentum and have only brought people out in their hundreds.

The only way to fight against exhaustion is to inject the strike with fresh troops. By whatever means, the NSEU needs to mobilise the workers to draw their colleagues into struggle. Part of the problem has been a lack of initiative on the part of the union leaders. In the words of one striker:

“I think there would be a ripple effect if we win over the rest of the workforce [but] it feels like there's no notice or communication about it.”

But in order to strengthen the strike, a fighting programme is needed. The more conservative layers of the workforce must be given confidence that there is a plan that can succeed in bringing Samsung to its knees, and force it to accept the terms of the workers. They will only be convinced to join the fray if they are confident that their leaders are prepared to fight to the finish.

A plan of escalation must be drawn up to avoid the strike becoming isolated and losing steam. At the same time, the union must prepare for a dangerous enemy in Yoon Suk Yeol and the armed bodies of men at the disposal of the South Korean state, who – as we saw in his brutal crackdown on last year’s truckers’ strike – will stop at nothing to make a bloody example of striking workers.

To resist repression, the NSEU must make a general appeal to the rest of the class. The might of the South Korean labour movement was revealed in 2021 by the strike called by the KCTU, which saw 550,000 workers walk out. There is a deep vein of anger and discontent across society.

The NSEU represents an enormously powerful section of the South Korean working class with the power to cripple the most important sector of the economy. They are perfectly positioned to give the lead to the entire class. By reaching out to workers in other sectors and directing them in a common struggle, they can present a mighty palisade against the repressive state forces, and paralyse the whole of society.

What is ultimately required is a revolutionary, working-class leadership, armed with an uncompromising socialist programme, that can unleash the fury simmering away in South Korean society and bring these struggles together into a joint assault to overthrow Yoon, the mega-corporations, and the capitalist system as a whole.