Samsung is currently in a negotiation deadlock with the Nationwide Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) — the union representing more than 28,000 Samsung workers — and the union has scheduled a one-day strike on June 7. While it may not feel like a major disruption, especially as strikes in other companies could last several weeks or months, chip production is a totally different story.
That’s because semiconductor factories take a substantial amount of time to start up. For example, Samsung lost over $36 million when a Korean factory lost power for just 28 minutes, killing 3.5% of global flash production for March 2018. Another Samsung factory experienced a one-minute outage in 2019, and it took three days to resume production. The company also lost almost $290 million in 2021 when it had to shut down its Austin, Texas plant for a month due to the cold snap affecting the power grid. This exacerbated chip shortages at that time, as the company had trouble restarting production.
