That’s why it’ll be a shock to the system when on May 21, nearly 45,000 of Samsung’s unionized workers plan to walk off the job for 18 days. If that happens, it will be the largest work stoppage in the history of the semiconductor industry, at the single most important chokepoint in the AI supply chain.

Suck it, AI companies. I use an agent to help me code projects and it’s genuinely useful. But these companies are leaches and they deserve a good kick in the balls. See price hikes due to shortages because of their build-outs. I’m very fortunate that I am not in need of any hardware (at the moment! hope nothing fails!), but I’m still very mad about how it’s affecting people.

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Last September, SK Hynix settled with its own union to allocate 10% of annual operating profit directly to employees as performance bonuses for the next decade, while removing caps on bonuses. Based on 2026 profit forecasts, that translates to average payouts of $460,000-$477,000 per worker this year across SK Hynix’s 35,000 staff, with projections approaching $900,000 per person next year. This is nothing new for SK Hynix: it already paid profit-sharing bonuses averaging about $95,000 per employee this past February.

Holy shit. The next time someone tries to tell you unions are bad, point them to this.

Side note: I’m literally trying to figure out and schedule time off before it expires that was won for me by my union. I didn’t know about it and it’s per-pay period so I got an automated email telling me to use it or lose it. What a great problem to have.