“If too many people want to use their vacation days, we have to play rock, paper, scissors to decide who gets to”
Samsung automated its 12-inch wafer lines with ceiling hoists. On the old 8-inch line at Giheung, women still carry 3 to 5 kilogram wafer lots by hand for eight hours a shift, and their thumbs deform. The union says the line ran at 18% capacity on the first day of the strike. Samsung says it is still meeting quotas and that no one on the line has filed a workers’ compensation claim. These are workers who stopped drinking water before shifts because they cannot leave for the bathroom. Nobody there has time to file a claim.