(Credit: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Amid enormous gains from memory orders, Samsung Electronics workers are demanding that the company share 15% of its operating profit with them.
As TechCrunch reports, the unions involved rejected a recent offer from executives. If talks break down, they will strike for 18 days, starting on May 21, which could throw the memory industry into an even deeper tailspin.
Workers held a rally today at Samsung's Pyeongtaek campus in South Korea. They want Samsung to drop its performance bonus cap and share 15% of its operating profits with workers. This comes after rival memory maker, SK Hynix, is reportedly set to pay an average bonus of around $400,000 to each of its 35,000 employees amid soaring profits, TechCrunch notes.
Samsung Electronics is estimated to have made about $38 billion in operating profit in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Shaving 15% from annualized earnings at that scale would amount to over $25 billion distributed among chip workers.
It's not clear what Samsung is offering its workers at this time, but it's not that. Reuters reports that Samsung has sought court intervention to prevent illegal actions during the strike, such as blocking production lines. Yahoo reports that the rally received raucous support from workers, with over 30,000 in attendance, and some claiming as high as 39,000.
Although the rally received a lot of support from Samsung workers, there was a form of counter-protest. Shareholders gathered nearby and accused workers of undermining the company at a critical time. Indeed, with Samsung just one of three major memory makers, it represents a key (and highly lucrative) bottleneck in the supply chain. A lengthy strike could exacerbate the RAM crunch, giving the workers a pretty good bargaining chip.
Employees previously went on strike in 2024, the first time in Samsung's history, The New York Times notes. It ended after 25 days, however, primarily because employees could no longer afford to strike without pay.