The South Korean government has approved extending the working hours to
64 hours per week for Samsung workers engaged in semiconductor researchand development. ---- The global commercial and competitive clash
develops ineluctably through the greater exploitation of the workforce.
---- Greater productivity and therefore a shortening of the working
hours necessary to reproduce the value of the workforce, increased
unemployment and at the same time an increase in the hours worked,
bringing the condition of the working class back to the dawn of
nineteenth-century capitalism, with work commitments of over 10 hours
per day.
The metalworkers' contract in Italy and the need for a united and
generalized battle.
Samsung, one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer
electronics and semiconductors, has obtained approval from the South
Korean government to extend the working hours of its research and
development personnel to 64 hours per week. The government decision
classically aims to strengthen its competitiveness in the field of chip
research and production. Already today in South Korea people work much
more than elsewhere in terms of time: 1,915 hours a year, compared to
1,791 in the United States, 1,669 in Italy and 1,349 hours in Germany,
who are those who work the least time, among the citizens of the OECD
area. As reported by Chosun Daily, one of Korea's largest newspapers,
confirming the gregarious role of certain "mainstream" press around the
world, "Samsung's LSI (Large Scale Integration) division has reportedly
encountered difficulties in meeting project deadlines due to the 52-hour
work week limit" imposed by a previous labor law, obtained by unions
only in 2018. The authorization came on April 9 from the Gyeonggi branch
of the Ministry of Employment and Labor and allows the tech giant to
have its R&D staff work up to 64 hours a week for the first three months
and up to 60 hours for the next three. This move follows a revision of
labor laws announced on March 14, which allows semiconductor companies
to request an extension of the working week for up to six months per
application, with the possibility of a further one-time extension of the
same duration. Inevitably, according to a ministry official, other
companies in the sector are also preparing to make similar requests. At
the same time, Samsung has instructed its subsidiaries around the world
to reduce administrative staff by up to 30% and 15% in some sales and
marketing divisions. Samsung employs over 300,000 people (2023 data),
more than half of whom are abroad. The position of the manufacturers was
well summarized by the interim South Korean president Choi Sang-mok, who
stated: "In order for Korea to overcome its rivals in the fierce
competition in the semiconductor sector, it is necessary to allow
researchers to work more flexibly". Translated: to play on equal terms
with giants like China, in a key sector not only for economic but also
military development, a further increase in working hours is needed. The
chip sector, moreover, is constantly expanding. "The global
semiconductor market," explained John Neuffer, president and CEO of the
Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade association and lobbying
group founded in 1977 that represents the U.S. semiconductor industry
based in Washington DC, "recorded its highest sales year ever in 2024,
surpassing $600 billion for the first time. The market is expected to
grow in double digits through 2025." The investments are gigantic.
According to the news site Nikkei Asia, in the first half of 2024, China
spent more on chip production than South Korea, Taiwan and the United
States combined. The result is that this race for primacy and production
is transformed into a sort of further "militarization" of work, meaning
by this a total subjugation of the working masses to norms and practices
similar to military discipline in exchange for paltry economic
treatment, a characteristic that is in part ever-present and a stigma of
Asian capitalist societies, from Vietnam to South Korea, passing through
Japan and arriving at China itself, with daily work commitments of up to
12 hours a day. (1) A recipe that companies see as mandatory, so much so
that they consider the current proposal to derogate from the maximum
limit of 52 hours per week not entirely sufficient. The appetite of
capital in this product sector is particularly high; in fact, according
to a study by the Capgemini Research Institute, one of the largest
companies active in the sector of consultancy for the technological and
business transformation of companies, the demand for AI (Artificial
Intelligence) chips will grow by 29% by 2026, a rate almost double that
of the expected growth of the entire semiconductor sector (+15%). In
this growth and diffusion of Artificial Intelligence in production
processes and the use of the same AI applied to research to optimize the
design and production to improve the performance of the chips
themselves, once again it is the exploitation and working time of the
workforce that will determine greater advantages for capitalists,
whether public or private. With the classic extension of the working
day, we are faced with the classic extraction of "absolute surplus
value", that is, that which cannot be obtained through automation and
"machinism", due to a relative decrease in the time within which the
worker reproduces the value of his own labor power, known as "relative
surplus value". This surplus labor/surplus value of unpaid labor power
in the production process is what the capitalist appropriates. The
classic theft by the bourgeoisie with respect to the overall value
incorporated in the goods produced with respect to the quantity of paid
labor.
The labor power that the worker sells as a commodity has in fact the
particular characteristic of producing value, but the value of labor
power is essentially determined by the quantity of labor necessary for
its conservation and reproduction, as well as by other factors dependent
on concrete historical situations; if this value is reproduced, for
example, in four hours of daily work, but the use of labor power is
extended for a total of ten hours a day, there will be six hours of
surplus labor which translate into a greater quantity of product and
therefore into surplus value. Surplus value is therefore the value of
surplus labor, that is, of the work done in addition to that which
corresponds to the value of his wages. The production of surplus value
and the availability of surplus value in the hands of the entrepreneur
is the direct reason and determining purpose of capitalist production,
the essential condition for the occurrence of the accumulation of
capital itself. As can be seen, we are still faced, both in the West,
hypocritically self-defined as democratic and liberal, forgetful of
colonialism, with wars of violent appropriation of territories beyond
the borders, starting from the tormented African and Asian continents,
in addition to the two world wars unleashed in the last century, and in
today's East with despotic and authoritarian political regimes, always
and only with the incessant struggle between the social conditions of
the working masses and the dominant bourgeoisie. These, variously
supported by the different government and political groups, in their
inexhaustible thirst for profit, confirm more and more the inevitability
of the class struggle and the need for significant struggles for
significant increases in their wage and regulatory conditions and the
urgent resumption of the battle for a substantial reduction in daily
working hours in defense of the employment of the new generations and
the female masses, in the constant struggle for emancipation from the
exploitation of man by man and of man by woman. But for reasons that we
have tried and are constantly trying to explain on these pages, a good
part of our reformist and/or progressive political and trade union
structures still do not seem to arrive at and understand this
determination, still intent on seeking grounds for discussion and even
"codetermination" with the public and private employers. This is the
case of the CGIL, fortunately still the largest rooted and
representative trade union in Italy, which despite the social
emergencies, even declared by the management group, is unable to set up
a single and generalized battle against the government and the
employers. And yet the opportunity is given and tempting. The
metalworkers' contract, which expired in June 2024, has not yet been
renewed, indeed Federmeccanica and Assistal, the employers'
associations, are claiming their own counter platform which clearly, as
far as wage increases are concerned, does not go beyond the IPCA -NEI
(Harmonized Consumer Price Index, net of imported energy goods), a
parameter which does not reflect the real increase in inflation, which
is also defined in an inter-confederal and Confindustria agreement, and
absolutely nothing as far as the possibility of a reduction in working
hours is concerned, which the same joint union proposal limits itself to
requesting as a sort of voluntary experimentation by the employers.
Employers who are not coincidentally preparing to propose objectives in
line with South Korean strategies by not providing for any reduction in
working hours, but exclusively greater flexibility, which as we now know
means maximum use of manpower well beyond the legally foreseen hours in
times of production peaks and the possibility of reduction and dismissal
in times of crisis and market reduction. No increase in minimum wages,
an increase in the variable part of the salary with a proposal to
increase the "flexible benefits" up to 400 euros, cancellation of
seniority increases, a one-off payment of 700 euros for companies
without supplementary bargaining, a possible pension for
non-self-sufficiency as a new form of social protection, therefore a
further form of individual insurance, like all forms of "corporate
welfare", culpably introduced by trade unions in the last ten years in
national bargaining, with the result of increasing economic and
regulatory inequalities between the different categories by granting
different salary sums, which are also tax-free for the employer
counterpart. Always culpably, the national union leaderships give up on
unifying the group of over 1.5 million metalworkers with public sector
workers, over three million workers, including workers in the health
sector and local public transport, but they continue to proceed with
contract renewals in the individual categories, even anticipating some
contracts such as that of the chemists, not yet expired (expires at the
end of June 2025), obtaining an average increase of 290 euros in the
three-year period July 2025 June 2028 for the approximately 200 thousand
workers in the sector, the same amount claimed by the metalworkers,
codifying a babel and a disparity in economic and regulatory treatment
depending on the product sectors and the same more or less profitable
conditions for the individual economic and production sectors. Just as
last year the general unification of workers on a general wage battle
was prevented, obtaining a 435 euro wage increase for the 280 thousand
credit workers while for the Supervisory Services a contract was signed
that led to wage increases of 5 euros per hour, "forcing" the judiciary
to intervene to recover larger wage masses. After the national general
strike of November 29, jointly called by CGIL and UIL, which had also
seen the availability and participation of large masses of workers, the
machine of the united struggle stopped, proceeding on the terrain of
referendums,(2) which represent a deviation and a distorted surrogate of
a real mass mobilization, as well as a de facto interclass terrain,
since they are aimed at all citizens, including those (the bosses) who
make use of those same laws that they would like to repeal and which, if
lost, can represent a further moment of distrust and collapse of the
potential for struggle and organizational strength of the workers'
movement as a whole and of the CGIL itself. Winning on the four proposed
questions and reaching the quorum, that is 26 million voters, will in
fact be very problematic and in this case economic difficulties will be
added to the political difficulties, since the expected economic
compensations will not be granted; furthermore, precisely for this
reason, we believe that the mechanics' contract will not be resolved
before June 8 and 9, the date of the referendum vote, after which, in
the event of a defeat, the employers will have an easy time returning to
the table and imposing their contract. Waiting for the referendum result
without a strategy built beforehand and without having a plan B seems
unfortunate to us. We must immediately set the coordinates of a unitary
and generalized strategy on wages and resume and relaunch the objective
of the minimum wage and open a general and national unitary dispute on
this until the objective is achieved. Only by winning partial but
unitary battles can we re-establish that trust and that recognition of
representation and political union militancy in the workplace,
particularly in the new generations. The road is long but we need to
know where we want to go. If there is no clarity of objectives and
strategies, but only a sort of continuous and generic enunciation of
social ills, albeit associated with a generic denunciation and a renewed
"pietism" for the conditions of the working masses and the new
generations, the harshness of the events and facts that overwhelm and
determine the social and even cultural condition can only determine a
further weakening and fraying of class solidarity, the development and
growth of individualism, the loss of the solidarity and internationalist
horizons of the working masses, exploited everywhere.
Notes:
1) See "For a First of May of struggle and resistance" il CANTIERE n 25
April 2024.
2) See "Better to take a single step with all the comrades on the royal
road of life than to remain isolated to travel hundreds of leagues in
the abstract" il CANTIERE n 34 April 2025
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten