① For example, Mars ignites construction materials in the construction industry, and labor disputes have also sparked Samsung workers' stronger will to fight this year; ② Since Samsung has been liberalizing trade union policies for less than four years, the market doesn't know how much impact the “Samsung strike” will have.
Finance Association, March 22 (Editor Shi Zhengcheng) With domestic manufacturers gaining support, news of the “Samsung factory fire” has rarely been heard in recent years, which also makes today's news somewhat nostalgic.
According to Yonhap News Agency and other local media reports, a fire broke out at 15:37 p.m. local time at the Samsung SDI building in Giheung-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. The fire department quickly arrived at the scene after receiving the report. It took about 20 minutes to completely extinguish the fire.
(Samsung SDI Kixing District facility, source: Samsung SDI)
According to reports, the place where the fire started was a research and development facility being expanded by Samsung SDI. It was initially determined that sparks from welding work splashed onto combustible materials. Due to timely disposal and evacuation, the fire did not cause any injuries, and some tents near the scene were burnt.
Samsung SDI's main business is batteries and electronic materials. Among them, the electronic materials business includes semiconductors and display materials. In the global power battery market, Samsung SDI and its Korean colleague SK On can probably rank fifth and sixth.
Samsung is really under pressure
Although we have not seen any specific impact this fire will have on the industrial chain, the “fire” surrounding Samsung has indeed been lit.
(Union workers from 11 trade unions under the Samsung Group held a press conference on February 6 to call for a 5.4% increase in wages by 2024)
At the beginning of this week, the largest labor union within Samsung, the National Samsung Electronics Workers Union, announced the establishment of a labor dispute committee to officially launch a labor dispute committee.
According to reports, Samsung Electronics' labor and management have held 10 wage negotiations since September of last year, but they have always had major differences over basic wage increases and other benefits. The management is willing to provide a 3% salary increase, but it is not even half of what the trade union requires.
Therefore, the National Samsung Electronics Workers' Union also launched a strike vote this week. The deadline is April 5. According to Korean law, the threshold for trade unions to take collective action is for more than 80% of union members to vote, and the majority of people agree. As of Wednesday afternoon this week, the turnout rate was over 80%. However, trade union representatives also said that the current situation does not mean that a strike will begin immediately after the voting deadline; they are still “willing to discuss with the company at any time.”
Will history be made this year?
For Samsung, trade unions and strikes are actually quite new things. Lee Byung-chul, the founder of the Samsung Group, and Lee Gun-hee, the second chairman, both insisted on the policy of opposing the formation of trade unions. At the same time, they also paid Samsung's “migrant workers” at the highest level of remuneration in the industry. Therefore, since it was founded in 1969, Samsung Electronics has never gone on strike.
Lee Jae-rong, the third-generation head, announced a policy allowing trade unions to be formed in May 2020. Among them, the number of members of the National Samsung Electronics Workers Union, founded in 2021, ranks first among the five major trade unions in the group. In particular, after the company proposed a salary increase at the end of last year, the number of people in the union doubled to 20,000 in just 4 months.
It is worth mentioning that Samsung Electronics' trade union was officially authorized to strike in 2022 and 2023, but in the end, they did not stop working. However, this year's situation will be even more serious — Samsung's salary level was actually surpassed by SK Hynix last year. Furthermore, since Samsung Electronics' semiconductor business lost over 10 billion US dollars last year, this group of employees was also excluded from the scope of bonus payments.
According to a listed company, the average annual salary of SK Hynix employees in 2023 was 121 million won. Although down 9.59% year on year, it is higher than Samsung's 1.2 trillion won. In 2022, the average salary for Samsung employees was 135 million won, compared to 133 million won for SK Hynix.