The full-scale strike by the Samsung Biologics (207940.KS) labor union entered its second day on Friday, with both sides still far apart.
According to the Samsung Biologics branch of the Samsung Group Supra-Enterprise Labor Union on Friday, the union launched its full-scale strike on May 1, Labor Day. The union plans to continue the walkout through May 5 as previously announced. The union said about 2,800 of its 4,000 members participated in the strike on the first day. The action is being conducted without separate collective protests, with workers taking annual leave, refusing holiday shifts and stepping away from their duties.
The Samsung Biologics union had demanded an average wage increase of 14% and an incentive payment of 30 million won per person. The company concluded that the demands were difficult to accept given its payment capacity and the need to secure funds for growth.
Thirteen rounds of negotiations were held from December last year through March, but the two sides failed to reach an agreement, prompting the union to strike. It is the first strike since Samsung Biologics was founded in 2011.
On the first day of the walkout, the two sides only confirmed their differences over the cause of the strike.
In a statement, the company said the union's demands "have been difficult to accept in reality, which has made negotiations challenging," adding, "In particular, the demands directly tied to the company's personnel and management rights were difficult for the company to accept, making it hard to find common ground."
The union also issued a statement countering the company's claims. "The essence of the problem does not lie in the union's demands being excessive," it said. "The problem is that the company failed to prepare a proposal that union members could accept over more than a month, and despite knowing the potential losses from a strike, it failed in both substantive negotiations and emergency response."
Samsung Biologics management and the union will return to the negotiating table on Sunday under the mediation of the Jungbu Regional Employment and Labor Office. Whether an actual deal can be reached remains uncertain, as months of prior talks have only confirmed the gap between the two sides.
The company estimates that the full-scale strike will disrupt production processes and cause damages of at least 640 billion won ($470 million).
Because of the nature of the continuous manufacturing process, even a brief halt risks protein degradation, requiring the disposal of entire production batches, which inevitably leads to large-scale losses.
A partial strike involving about 60 workers conducted from April 28 to 30, ahead of this month's full-scale walkout, also halted some processes as raw and subsidiary materials were not supplied on time. The company estimated that the three-day partial strike alone caused losses of around 150 billion won ($110 million).
In its statement, the union argued, "Even if 100% of the union's major demands were accepted, the amount would be smaller than the losses." It added, "A management team engaged in normal business operations should have come to the negotiating table with additional revised proposals rather than merely complaining about severe tangible and intangible damages."
The union sharpened its criticism, saying, "The current management appears to have lost normal business judgment and control, and it also appears to be paralyzed in decision-making due to an abnormal governance structure."
