PYEONGTAEK, South Korea -- Thousands of Samsung Electronics workers rallied Thursday astatine its machine spot analyzable successful Pyeongtaek, South Korea, demanding higher bonuses and threatening to onslaught arsenic booming request for artificial quality drives up memory-chip profits.
Holding signs and waving banners, the workers gathered astatine a mill compound amid a dense constabulary presence, shouting “make compensation transparent and region maximum limits connected bonuses!” Union officials said astir 40,000 members participated successful the protest. Police did not instantly supply a assemblage estimate.
The rally came hours aft Samsung’s cross-town rival, SK Hynix, posted an each clip precocious successful quarterly gross and operating nett for the January-March quarter, a leap it attributed to expanding planetary investments successful information centers and different AI infrastructure that drove up the demands for its representation chips.
Samsung, which unneurotic with SK Hynix produces astir two-thirds of planetary representation chips, forecast earlier this period that its first-quarter operating nett would scope a grounds 57.2 trillion won ($38.6 billion). That would beryllium higher than the 37.6 trillion won ($25.4 billion) posted by SK Hynix connected Thursday, though Samsung has a much divers lineup of businesses, including smartphones and user electronics.
Samsung’s union, which represents astir 74,000 workers, says the institution has failed to connection capable compensation contempt its beardown performance. It has rejected the management’s connection for bonuses of restricted banal and calling for removing caps connected bonuses.
The national has threatened to signifier an 18-day walkout starting May 21 if negotiations with absorption neglect and claims that specified enactment would outgo the institution much than 1 trillion won ($676 million) a day.
“We won’t halt this combat until our just demands are met,” Choi Seung-ho, a national leader, said done a loudspeaker from atop a crane-mounted structure.
While semiconductor makers person benefited from the AI boom, the warfare successful the Middle East has clouded the aboriginal outlook, disrupting supplies of cardinal materials specified arsenic helium that are important to chipmaking and pushing up vigor costs.
In a league telephone Thursday, Woo Hyun Kim, SK Hynix’s main fiscal officer, said the institution is intimately monitoring the struggle but does not expect a meaningful interaction connected production, saying it has been diversifying its sourcing of helium and bromine beyond the Middle East and has capable inventory.
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Kim Tong-hyung reported from Seoul, South Korea. AP writer Hyung-jin Kim contributed to the study from Seoul.
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