Samsung union issues final ultimatum: if demands are not addressed by 10 AM Friday, an 18-day mass strike will be launched

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South Korea's Samsung Electronics' largest labor union issued a final ultimatum today (14th), demanding management respond to wage demands by 10 AM Friday (15th), or it will launch an 18-day large-scale strike on May 21 as scheduled. Since Samsung dominates the global DRAM and HBM memory markets, this strike could impact the AI chip supply chain and memory price trends. (Recap: DRAM set to surge! Samsung strike vote concludes — better to buy memory than gold now?) (Background: Memory prices surging too hard — Samsung's mobile business could face first-ever net loss in history) South Korea's Samsung Electronics' largest labor union, the National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), issued a final ultimatum today (14th). The union leader stated that if management fails to respond to labor's wage and bonus demands by 10 AM Friday (15th), the union will immediately launch large-scale strike action, and the 18-day strike plan originally scheduled to commence on May 21 will proceed as planned. Labor-Management Negotiations Repeatedly Collapse This labor-management standoff can be traced back to earlier this year. Samsung Electronics employees were dissatisfied with the company's wage growth, especially as the global artificial intelligence (AI) boom drove a surge in semiconductor demand, with Samsung's HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) business achieving record profits, yet rank-and-file employees did not share in the rewards they deserved. In March of this year, NSEU held a strike vote, receiving overwhelming support of up to 93% and obtaining legal strike authorization. The union demanded the company increase base wages and performance bonuses, matching the bonus levels of competitor SK Hynix. It is understood that Samsung once proposed a one-time special bonus of approximately 340,000 KRW as a settlement condition, but it was rejected by the union, which considered it merely a "one-time appeasement" rather than a long-term wage structure reform. Subsequently, after multiple rounds of negotiations, including intervention and mediation by the South Korean government, the two sides still failed to narrow their differences. Earlier this month, the final round of negotiations mediated by the government collapsed, and the union promptly announced it would launch an 18-day large-scale strike. 18-Day Strike Could Impact Global Chip Supply If the strike launches as scheduled on May 21, it will be the largest and longest strike action since Samsung Electronics' founding. As Samsung holds a dominant position in the global DRAM and NAND Flash markets and is fully committed to producing HBM3/HBM4 high-bandwidth memory for Nvidia, this strike could cause severe disruption to the global AI server supply chain. Market analysts estimate that an 18-day full-scale strike could cause Samsung's chip production capacity to be interrupted for up to a month, as restarting production lines requires time to restore stability. Potential losses could reach as high as 9 trillion KRW (approximately NT$210 billion), and could further push up memory prices, affecting the already elevated smartphone and PC markets.

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Published:2026-05-14 08:15:30

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