There's a high-stakes game of chicken afoot at Samsung, with its management and unionized workers both trying to strengthen their hand via a series of moves and countermoves ahead of a planned showdown next month.
Even so, Samsung workers appear to have won the latest round by successfully disrupting nearly a fifth of the output at the highly mechanized Samsung memory fabs as well as nearly three-fifths of the output at the more labor intensive foundry lines.
Samsung workers recently managed to curtail output at the tech behemoth's memory fabs and foundry lines by 18.4 percent and 58.1 percent, respectively
As per the reports trickling out of South Korea, Samsung workers held a huge rally on the 23rd of April, attracting a crowd of as many as 40,000 people.
As a result of that rally and the absence of workers, the union estimates that the output at Samsung's highly mechanized memory fabs and the more labor intensive foundry lines plunged by 18.4 percent and 58.1 percent, respectively.
For the benefit of those who might not be aware, Samsung's union workers are currently demanding 15 percent of the company's annual operating profit, which amounts to around $30 billion, in bonuses. Otherwise, these union workers are threatening an 18-day strike that would begin on May 21 and last until June 07.
It is now evident via this week's rally that an 18-day strike would spark unprecedented chaos across Samsung's business units, with grave financial implications likely to ensue.
Of course, this is not the first time that Samsung's workers have gone on strike. In fact, they did so just last year, when the work was halted for a much more manageable 3-day period.
Meanwhile, as we reported recently, Samsung now expects its total sales for the first quarter of 2026 to amount to 133 trillion won ($88.273 billion) vs. the consensus estimate of 116.81 trillion won.
More astonishing still, Samsung expects to report 57.2 trillion won ($37.8 billion) in operating profit for Q1 2026, which corresponds to an astounding year-over-year growth of 700 percent! What's more, this figure equates to a sequential growth of 184 percent vs. the operating profit of 20.1 trillion won that the South Korean tech behemoth had reported in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Analysts at KB Securities now believe Samsung will earn a total operating profit of 327 trillion won in 2026 and an unfathomable 488 trillion won in 2027, thereby becoming the most profitable company globally, eclipsing NVIDIA's expected operating profit by a material, if narrow, margin
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
