Samsung Union Votes on Wage Deal After Strike Suspended

Unionized workers at Samsung Electronics began voting Friday on a tentative wage agreement reached hours before an 18-day strike was scheduled to start. The largest union at the company, representing nearly 48,000 workers, suspended industrial action that had been set to begin on Thursday while members cast ballots through next Wednesday.

Background to the Dispute Negotiations had been deadlocked since late last year over how to distribute bonuses from profits generated by surging demand for artificial intelligence memory chips. Samsung had proposed paying memory chip workers bonuses equivalent to 607 percent of annual salary while offering 50 to 100 percent to employees in other divisions.

The union sought to abolish a 50 percent bonus cap and allocate 15 percent of annual operating profit to a shared pool.

Under the deal, Samsung will create a special semiconductor performance bonus pool equal to 10.5 percent of business performance earnings without a cap. The bonuses will be paid in company stock over at least 10 years, tied to targets for the chip division to reach more than 200 trillion won in annual operating profit from 2026 to 2028.

A decision on dividing the pool among loss-making divisions was postponed for one year. South Korean court granted the company an injunction requiring minimum staffing levels for safety and quality maintenance and barring union occupation of facilities.

Samsung shares rose more than 8 percent on Thursday after the tentative agreement was announced, while the Kospi index also gained over 8 percent.