The Long Island Rail Road is on its third day of a strike that has stranded close to 300,000 weekday commuters and shut down the busiest commuter railroad in North America. Across the Pacific, 47,000 Samsung Electronics workers are preparing to walk off the job on Thursday in what would be the largest strike in semiconductor history. The industries are different. The underlying fight is the same.

Both disputes center on a single question: who gets paid when revenues surge?

LIRR: $61 Million a Day, a 2% Gap

The LIRR strike began at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, after two days of round-the-clock negotiations between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a coalition of five unions representing engineers, signalmen, and machinists. Roughly 3,500 workers walked off, about half the railroad's workforce. The strike is the first on the LIRR since 1994.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli estimated economic losses at up to $61 million per day. The Long Island Association puts the figure closer to $70 million. With Memorial Day approaching and summer tourism season beginning, the timing compounds the damage.

The dispute comes down to roughly two percentage points. Both sides agreed to retroactive raises totaling 9.5% for 2023 through 2025. The sticking point is the fourth year of the contract: the unions want 5%, and the MTA offered 3% with options to reach 4.5% through work-rule concessions. Union leaders say their members have gone more than three years without raises while the cost of living in the New York region has climbed.

Governor Kathy Hochul blamed the Trump administration for cutting mediation short. Trump responded on Truth Social: "No, Kathy, it's your fault." The National Mediation Board summoned both sides to Manhattan on Sunday, and talks resumed Monday morning. MTA Chair Janno Lieber said he was "cautiously optimistic" but added that the two sides needed to get the deal finished.

Samsung: $700 Million a Day, a Question of AI Profits

At Samsung Electronics, the numbers are larger and the stakes extend well beyond one company. The National Samsung Electronics Union has authorized an 18-day strike beginning May 21, with more than 47,000 workers expected to participate. If it proceeds, the walkout would be the largest work stoppage in semiconductor history.

Samsung makes roughly a third of the world's DRAM and a substantial share of high-bandwidth memory, the specialized chips AI systems require. A strike would ripple through the global AI supply chain at a moment when demand for HBM already exceeds production capacity. JPMorgan estimates the strike could hit Samsung's operating profit by $14 billion to $20.8 billion.

The union's demands center on bonuses. Workers want 15% of Samsung's operating profit allocated to performance pay, up from the current capped structure. Samsung recorded nearly eightfold profit growth in Q1 2026, driven by AI-related memory sales. Workers received none of that payout under the existing bonus system. Meanwhile, rival SK Hynix settled with its union last year, agreeing to allocate 10% of operating profit to workers and removing bonus caps. Based on 2026 projections, that formula delivers per-employee bonuses approaching $400,000 to $450,000.

About 200 Samsung employees have defected to SK Hynix in the past four months, according to the union. The talent drain is real. So is the pressure: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung urged both sides to find a settlement, and Prime Minister Kim Min-seok called an emergency ministerial meeting. Samsung accounts for 12.5% of South Korea's GDP.

The Throughline: AI's Uneven Returns

These strikes are not about technology displacing jobs. They are about who captures the value when technology creates a boom. Samsung's chip workers are not protesting automation; they are protesting a compensation formula that delivers record corporate profits while holding worker pay flat. LIRR engineers are not worried about being replaced by AI; they are demanding a raise after years of stagnation in one of the country's most expensive labor markets.

But the two disputes share something else: both involve workers whose labor is essential to economic infrastructure that cannot easily be replaced. The Samsung chip workers produce the memory that powers AI systems. LIRR engineers move the workforce that powers New York's economy. When those workers stop, the systems stop.

Analysts at the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea warned that the Samsung dispute could affect confidence in Korea's reputation as a dependable manufacturing partner. A Korea University law professor told Reuters that a successful strike could put companies "in a very unfavorable bargaining position in the future." That is, of course, the point.

Union leverage is rising globally in sectors where labor cannot be offshored, automated quickly, or replaced without significant disruption. Semiconductor fabrication is one such sector. Commuter rail is another. Whether these walkouts succeed or fail, they mark an inflection point. Workers at essential chokepoints are testing how much leverage they actually have in an economy where AI-driven profits are surging and compensation has not kept pace.

The Samsung strike is scheduled for Thursday. The LIRR talks continue. The outcome of both will tell us something about what happens when the people who build the infrastructure decide to ask for their share.