Samsung's Union Takes Its Fight to Times Square

The Ad That Crossed the Pacific

Samsung Electronics DX Division Donghaeng Union bought billboard space in the world’s most expensive advertising square and told the world something the company would rather keep internal: its workers feel left behind in the AI transition.

Starting September 5, the union’s 15-second spots aired every 35 minutes on Times Square screens. The messages were simple and deliberately global. “GREAT PRODUCTS BEGIN WITH PEOPLE.” “WE ARE STILL HERE.”

The subtext, understood instantly by anyone tracking Samsung’s corporate politics, was aimed squarely at Chairman Lee Jae-yong and his push to restructure the company around artificial intelligence. The DX division — responsible for smartphones, TVs, and home appliances — argues it is bearing the brunt of efficiency drives while being starved of investment relative to the company’s semiconductor arm, the DS division.

A Dispute With a Hierarchy Problem

Samsung is not one company. It is a constellation of businesses, each with its own profit center, compensation structure, and bargaining dynamics. The semiconductor division has been Samsung’s crown jewel through the AI boom, riding surging demand for high-bandwidth memory and advanced logic chips. The DX division, by contrast, has faced margin pressure from a cyclical consumer electronics slump and intensifying competition from Apple and Chinese manufacturers.

The union is not asking for parity in difficulty. It is asking for parity in reward. Its demands include 1,000 shares of Samsung stock per DX employee, a common fund tied to company-wide performance rather than division-level results, and a uniform base salary increase rate across all divisions.

That last point is the sharpest one. Samsung’s management has historically set wage increases by division, which means DS workers have seen materially larger raises than their DX colleagues. The union wants to break that model — or at least flatten it significantly.

The Irony of Timing

The most remarkable thing about the Times Square ad is not that the union is airing it. It is that the union is airing it at all, given the legal and procedural landscape.

Samsung and the union already reached a government-brokered wage agreement earlier this year. The Donghaeng Union filed applications to invalidate the provisional settlement and to halt wage and collective bargaining — both were rejected by courts. By any measure of Korean labor law, the union’s formal bargaining position is exhausted.

Yet here it is, in Manhattan.

This is not merely a dispute about wages. It is a dispute about voice. The union is signaling that when domestic institutional channels close, it will open new ones — including the court of global public opinion. Advertising in Times Square is expensive. It requires resources, coordination, and a willingness to invite scrutiny. It is also a statement that theDX workers see themselves as part of Samsung’s future, not casualties of its restructuring.

Lee Jae-yong Under the Lens

The union has announced it will begin protests outside Lee Jae-yong’s residence in Yongsan, Seoul, starting September 18. That detail matters more than the Times Square ad. Directly targeting the chairman’s home is a level of personal confrontation rare in South Korean labor history.

Lee inherited control of Samsung’s operating empire after his father’s death in 2020, but his authority has never been as consolidated as that of previous generations of chaebol heads. He is navigating a massive organizational transformation centered on AI, facing antitrust scrutiny, and managing a board that is still adjusting to his leadership style. Labor unrest that escalates publicly — especially unrest that draws international media attention — adds to the friction.

The ads and the planned protests force Lee into a position he likely did not anticipate: justifying, in public, why a division that builds consumer products perceived as essential to Samsung’s identity is treated as secondary to chipmakers.

What This Means for Samsung’s Governance

Samsung’s labor dispute has broader implications than any single wage settlement. For decades, Korean chaebols have managed internal equity through centralized control and informal discretion. Division-level compensation is a tool of that control. Flattening it, as the DX union demands, would shift power away from the chairman’s office and toward collective bargaining frameworks.

If the union succeeds in drawing consistent international attention to the DX division’s grievances, Samsung may face pressure to create new governance structures that give workers a louder role in AI-related restructuring decisions. That is a significant ask for a company where labor representation has historically been limited.

The alternative is a pattern of sporadic, high-visibility disputes — Times Square one year, protests at the chairman’s gate the next — that gradually erode the social license Samsung enjoys as Korea’s corporate flagship.

Who Wins, Who Loses

No one wins cleanly here. Samsung’s management gains short-term leverage by pointing to the court rejections and the existing agreement. But it loses narrative control. The ad campaign reframes Samsung not as an AI leader but as a company that leaves its consumer electronics workers behind.

The union gains visibility and potentially public sympathy. But it risks being portrayed as irrational — pressing demands that a court and a government mediator have already considered. The strategy only pays off if the public sides with the message over the procedure.

Lee Jae-yong loses either way if this story continues to grow. A quiet wage settlement was manageable. A Times Square campaign aimed at his personal authority is not.

The next move is September 18, when protesters appear outside the chairman’s home. What happens after that will determine whether this dispute stays a labor story or becomes a governance story.