Last updated: May 18th, 2026 at 07:52 UTC+02:00
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It's a race against the clock.
Reading time: 2 minutes
Abhijeet Mishra / SamMobile
Samsung Electronics' workers union has threatened to take its over 40,000 members on strike starting May 21 if management doesn't accept its demands, which include a substantial performance bonus.
Talks between the management and the union have failed to find a way forward. The South Korean government desperately wants to avoid a strike, and it's now considering drastic measures to limit that possibility.
South Korea's Prime Minister Kim Min-seok held an emergency meeting on Sunday over the impending strike. Emergency arbitration is now among the options under consideration by the government, which would immediately prohibit industrial actions such as strikes for 30 days.
The prime minister said that just one day of suspension at Samsung's semiconductor factory would cause direct losses of over $660 million. He also highlighted that even a temporary pause on semiconductor production lines would lead to months of inactivity, with the final damage potentially running into the tens of billions of dollars.
If the government issues an emergency arbitration order through its labor minister, all industrial actions will be prohibited immediately for 30 days, during which the National Labor Relations Commission would conduct mediation and arbitration.
South Korea has rarely invoked these government powers, which goes to show that it's seriously worried about the impact of a strike at Samsung would have on the country's economy.
As far as companies being too big to fail go, Samsung is perhaps the biggest of them for South Korea. It accounts for nearly 23% of the country's entire exports and makes up 26% of its local stock market. It has more than 120,000 local employees.
The scale of this challenge is understandably not lost on the government, which is generally perceived to be union-friendly.
Adnan Farooqui is a long-term writer at SamMobile. Based in Pakistan, his interests include technology, finance, Swiss watches and Formula 1. His tendency to write long posts betrays his inclination to being a man of few words.
