Samsung’s union has asked the company to abolish a cap that limits bonuses to 50% of annual salaries and to allocate 15% of annual operating profit to a bonus pool that would be distributed to workers. It also wants Samsung to make the changes binding beyond this year.

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Jeff Kim, a KB Securities analyst, has estimated that an 18-day strike could disrupt global supplies of DRAM memory by 3% to 4% and NAND memory by 2% to 3%, which would likely fuel further price increases.

South Korean government officials have also warned about the impact of a strike as Samsung accounts for nearly a quarter of Korea’s exports.

An official at South Korea’s central bank has said that a strike could, in a worst-case scenario, shave 0.5 percentage points off a forecast 2.0% expansion in the South Korean economy this year.