Sawt Falasteen - South Korea's Samsung workers rally in thousands as strike looms

Samsung is a major producer of chips used in everything from artificial intelligence to consumer electronics, raising the prospect that the planned walkout could cause severe disruption and losses.

An association of three labour unions held the rally outside the company's plant in Pyeongtaek, south of the capital Seoul, to demand a seven-percent wage hike, the end of a cap on bonuses and other benefits.

"More than 40,000 members" took part, a union official told AFP, declining to be named. Local police did not immediately give an estimate.

Demonstrators waving banners reading "Let's eliminate the bonus cap" and "Change it to be transparent!" gathered in the sunlit streets around the factory, Samsung's largest for making memory and logic chips.

"We will not back down until we are guaranteed a transparent compensation system," said one female union member on stage, drawing applause from the crowd.

The workers are also demanding that Samsung allocates 15 percent of its operating profits for bonuses.

The unions, which represent nearly 90,000 workers in total, have said they will stage a strike from May 21 to June 7 unless a deal with management is reached.

The company said in a statement to AFP that it would "continue to work toward reaching a wage agreement at the earliest possible date".

The dispute comes as South Korean technology firms ride an AI boom that has bumped up national growth, pushed the stock market to record highs and drawn it closer to industry leaders the United States and China.

Samsung's shares have surged nearly 300 percent over the past year, while its rival SK hynix said on Thursday that it had obliterated its quarterly profit record.

Samsung said this year it had begun mass production of next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips, HBM4, seen as a key component for scaling up the vast data centres needed for AI development.

Long staunchly anti-union, founder Lee Byung-chul once vowed never to allow unions "until I have dirt over my eyes".

He died in 1987. Samsung Electronics' first labour union was formed in the late 2010s.

V.AbuAwwad--SF-PST