Samsung Electronics' union launched an 18-day work stoppage today, involving more than 45,000 workers. The dispute is about bonuses — specifically, who gets them.
Samsung's memory chip division is having a banner year. AI data centers need DRAM and NAND at industrial scale. Nvidia's $75.2 billion data center quarter runs on Samsung memory. The memory division is profitable. The logic and foundry divisions are not. Samsung's bonus structure reflects divisional performance, which means the workers making the chips that power the AI boom are getting smaller checks than the AI boom would suggest.
The union rejected Samsung's final offer and rejected a mediator's proposal. The 18-day stoppage starts today.
This is not an abstract labor story. Samsung makes the memory that goes into the GPUs that the labs train on. An 18-day disruption at this scale has supply chain implications for every AI infrastructure build currently underway, including the $27 billion Meta data center announced this week.
The workers want a share of the boom they are physically producing. Samsung said no. The stoppage started this morning.