India: Samsung workers win union recognition – now the real fight must begin!

Nearly 1,500 workers at Samsung’s massive plant in Chennai have battled the courts and the corrupt state government, both of which lined up behind their predatory multinational employer, to win recognition of their union. In addition to a 212-day legal fight, they launched a strike last September, which lasted 38 days. Overcoming vicious repression, hundreds of arrests, and all manner of underhanded manoeuvres from the bosses, they finally forced the Tamil Nadu Labour Department to register the Samsung India Workers‘ Union (SIWU) on 27 January.

This is an historic development, as Samsung is a notoriously anti-union employer. SIWU has become the first union of Samsung employees in India and only the second in the world, after the National Samsung Electronic Union (NSEU) in Korea. Moreover, the DMK-Alliance government in Tamil Nadu has taken every measure to prostrate itself to big business and threw all its weight behind Samsung’s efforts to crush the workers.

Nonetheless, through their collective strength and unity of purpose, the workforce has wrested a significant concession from the state courts, compelling Samsung bosses to negotiate with union officials over wages and conditions. This is a tremendous step forward, but it is only a step: the fight is far from over.

Workers in Chennai should not simply sit on their hands, but keep the pressure up until every single one of their demands is achieved!

Samsung dealt a bruising blow

The boom in the tech sector, which has yielded immense profits in the past several years, has been fed by the super-exploitation of workers in Asia in particular. The Kancheepuram plant in Chennai, which produces such consumer goods as televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines, employs almost 1,800 workers and contributes nearly a third of Samsung Electronics’ Indian revenue, about $12bn last year.

Employees at the Chennai plant report being made to work in unsafe conditions and endure many hours of unpaid overtime. If they want to visit the toilet, they must first “hand over their duties” to a colleague. If any worker raises complaints about their treatment, they can be locked in an isolated dark room, or made to stand in front of their colleagues to display their ‘shame’.

These methods of intense pressure and ritual humiliation on the part of the Samsung bosses are intended to squeeze every drop of profit from the workers’ toil and discourage any dissent. But workers are not machines: they can only endure such treatment for so long without incurring retaliation.

In July last year, the Chennai workers decided enough was enough and registered online their intention to form a union. Although this was their right under India’s Trade Unions Act (1926), and despite easily meeting the legal conditions in terms of membership and other criteria, the 45-day minimum term for union recognition elapsed with no acknowledgement from either the state government or the bosses.

This demonstrates we can have no illusions about legal or constitutional mechanisms granting workers their rights. The situation remained at a standstill until the workforce in Chennai started deploying the methods of class struggle.

In September 2024, the Chennai workers reached out to the CITU (Centre for Indian Trade Unions), a labour confederation linked to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and launched a strike and protest that captured national and even international attention. They presented a series of demands, including (first and foremost) union recognition, a wage increase, an eight-hour day, and an end to unpaid overtime.

The Chennai workers enjoyed massive solidarity from workers across the country and received a message of support from their brothers and sisters working for Samsung in Korea. At the same time, the workers appealed to the Madras High Court to force the Tamil Nadu Labour Department to comply with its legal obligations to recognise their union. The Labour Department responded by applying for multiple delays to drag things out.

The bosses dug their heels in, and the utterly rotten character of the DMK-Alliance government was exposed as it put the repressive state machinery at Samsung’s full disposal. Police were drafted in as the bosses’ hired goons, harassing and ultimately arresting 910 workers, including leading members of the CITU, who were seized in their homes in the dead of night. Samsung filed legal cases against some of the striking workers, who also faced death threats from the police. Even the small shopkeepers who made their livelihoods selling tea and snacks to Samsung employees were threatened by local authorities into withholding their wares.

When this intimidation failed, the bosses pivoted to deception. They offered a few crumbs such as increasing the frequency of shuttle buses for workers, hinting at a possible wage rise and offering to implement maternity leave. They also held six rounds of talks, both official and unofficial, including one that the bosses organised with non-striking workers, after which they announced (on behalf of the workforce) a deal had been reached and the strike was being called off!

Build on the victory!

The workers did not fall for any of these manoeuvres and only suspended their strike when the courts agreed to a timeline to impose union recognition. This partial retreat came amidst mounting pressure from the government, and shameful strike-breaking behaviour by the DMK-affiliated LPF union which claimed that the CITU was “misleading workers” by continuing the strike.

In December, the High Court gave the Registrar of Trade Unions in Tamil Nadu a six-week deadline to decide on the union’s application. A day before the historic announcement of SIWU’s recognition, CITU-affiliated unions in other companies launched a solidarity strike to pressure Samsung into conceding.

When the union was formally recognised by the Labour Department, CITU leader and now SIWU president E. Muthukumar (who was arrested in October) said:

"One hundred and six years ago in 1918 the Madras Labour Union became the country's first labour union and today the city makes history again."

We congratulate the Samsung workers on their victory, but we urge a word of caution. As we have seen, the legal apparatus of the Indian capitalist state resisted granting workers their basic rights until militant collective action forced it onto the back foot. In fact, despite winning union recognition, the withdrawal of the strike by the CITU also had the effect of driving the workers’ action into safer, legalistic channels.

The legal apparatus of the Indian capitalist state resisted granting workers their basic rights until militant collective action forced it onto the back foot / Image: GAVASKAR, Twitter

There is a lesson here, as SIWU representatives officially enter into negotiations with Samsung bosses for the first time. The best way to ensure that all the workers’ demands are achieved is to maintain the maximum pressure. If SIWU were to seize upon the workers’ newfound confidence and relaunch its strike action while negotiations are underway, it is much more likely that all the union's demands would be won.

At the very least, SIWU should prepare the ground now to resume its strike immediately if the bosses refuse to budge. Moreover, Samsung will be waiting for the opportunity to repay the workers for its humiliation. As Pazhani, a 34-year-old Samsung employee said today:

“We welcome the union registration we struggled [to win] for five months since September. After the protest ended the state ministers promised no punitive actions from management and yet Samsung is threatening to transfer young union supporters to different departments.”

The bosses will at this moment be concocting plans to claw back the initiative and exact revenge on the workers for their defiance. We note Samsung has yet to make any public comment on the formation of SIWU. The workers must be prepared to meet them strength for strength. Their advances so far have been achieved by their own might: not simply through legal niceties, nor the ‘solidarity’ of false friends like Congress and the rest of the bourgeois INDIA political alliance in Tamil Nadu. We also must note that even the CPI(M) is, to its shame, in a political alliance with the DMK and was effectively gifted six seats by the ruling party at the last state assembly elections.

The Chennai Samsung workers have set a fine example for the proletariat across India of what can be achieved through determined class struggle. Their method was not the large but symbolic ‘one-day shutdowns’ typically called by the big union confederations but sustained strike action. The results speak for themselves. Already, we have seen the power of solidarity displayed in the country-wide action by CITU members on the eve of the SIWU’s registration.

There is a huge potential for the Indian labour movement to lead the whole of society, not only in the struggle for better working conditions and wages but in a political struggle against the vicious capitalist regime of Modi and Adani. We saw how the farmers were able to galvanise the country in their victorious fight against the Central Government’s reactionary Agricultural Bill some years ago. We have now had a glimpse of the role the working class must play in the battles to come.