A South Korean court has legally ordered 7,087 Samsung Electronics workers to remain inside the company's semiconductor fabrication plants through a planned strike, but it did not stop one. And starting tomorrow, May 21, up to 50,000 Samsung employees will walk off the job in what would be the largest industrial action in the chipmaker's history.

The Suwon District Court's 31st Civil Division, presided over by Senior Presiding Judge Shin Woo-jung, issued the partial injunction on Monday. The order has three operative parts: safety and disaster-prevention systems must stay fully staffed, wafer-preservation work is classified as essential maintenance under Article 38 of South Korea's Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, and the Korean Metal Workers' Union is barred from occupying company facilities or blocking workers from entering.

Samsung separately notified the union it requires 7,087 workers to meet these obligations. Violations carry daily fines of 100 million won (approximately $74,000) per union and 10 million won ($7,400) per day for individual leaders.

Why Chip Fabs Cannot Simply Stop

Semiconductor fabrication runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week at tightly controlled temperatures and pressures. Any interruption in the chemical processes used to etch circuits onto silicon wafers can scrap entire production runs. By legally requiring maintenance crews and safety teams to remain on duty, the court placed a floor under how far production can fall. But a floor is not a ceiling. The remaining 43,000-plus workers can still walk.

The economic stakes are enormous. DRAM contract prices surged 90 to 95 percent quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026, according to TrendForce, with a further 58 to 63 percent increase forecast for Q2. Gartner projects PC prices will rise 17 percent and smartphone prices 13 percent by year-end compared with 2025. Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, and Asus have warned of price increases of 15 to 20 percent in the second half of 2026, with Asus projecting increases of up to 30 percent on some product lines.

Prof. Kwon Seok-joon of Sungkyunkwan University estimates that even a legally constrained 18-day walkout could cost Samsung between 10 trillion and 17 trillion won in direct losses, with restart stabilization adding a further two to three weeks. KB Securities analyst Kim Dong-won put the direct damage figure above 40 trillion won.

The AI Connection

Samsung is the world's largest memory chipmaker. Its HBM (high-bandwidth memory) chips go directly into the NVIDIA and AMD accelerators powering every major AI training cluster on the planet. A production disruption at Samsung does not just raise the price of your next laptop. It tightens the supply of the most critical component in the AI infrastructure buildout at the exact moment every hyperscaler is racing to secure capacity.

The dispute centers on bonus structures. Workers want a larger share of Samsung's profits tied to a transparent formula. Management wants to keep the current performance-based system. Mediation at the National Labor Relations Commission in Sejong, overseen by NLRC chairman Park Soo-geun, has so far failed to close the gap.

South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok has publicly threatened to invoke emergency arbitration under Article 76 of the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act if no deal materializes. That mechanism has rarely been used. Its invocation would signal the government considers the chip supply chain a matter of national economic security.

The 18-day strike is scheduled to begin Thursday, May 21. If it proceeds, it will be Samsung's largest labor action ever. The court order ensures the fabs won't go dark. It does not ensure they'll keep producing at anything close to normal capacity.

First reported by TechTimes and The Korea Herald. Additional reporting from Reuters, CNBC, and TrendForce.