Samsung Electronics’ South Korean employees began voting on Friday on a proposed wage deal that has brought a bitter split to their ranks. The deal offers massive bonuses for employees at the high-margin memory chip unit, but staff at other businesses, like smartphone and home appliance, have expressed significant concerns that such a deal would benefit one side of the company more than another.
The proposed agreement, which was brokered by the government earlier this week, was able to avert an eighteen-day strike. To the company, and to South Korea’s economy in general, the absence of that walkout was considered as a blessing. However, there is some friction among Samsung’s unionised workers, with many believing the deal was too hasty and unequal.
A spokesman for Samsung’s chip arm took the lead in the talks, which are believed to have been instigated by the company after a top executive at mobile phone maker LG has publicly stated his faith in the transaction. His union group, Samsung Electronics Labor Union, said it had 57,290 members eligible to vote, with 32,882 already having cast ballots as of Friday. The vote on how each person voted has not been revealed.
The approval of the deal will need a simple majority vote of all eligible union members who vote in favour, as well as a majority of all union members who vote. In either case, negotiations have to begin anew. The number of unionised Samsung workers who are eligible to vote has not been disclosed, due to some of them being members of multiple unions. Also, SELU rules state that members not current with their union dues may not vote.
This is an issue of how the proposed compensation plan treats various divisions. This year, workers in Samsung’s memory chip business that has benefited from the artificial intelligence boom will be getting bonuses of around four hundred sixteen thousand dollars each. Smaller, but substantial bonuses, will be provided to workers in the foundry and logic chip divisions. At the same time, other divisions, like smartphones and home appliances, are receiving much lower pay-outs.
The divide has led to resentment from those who were not chip workers, who say that the bargaining process reflected the interests of the semiconductor memory division. Lee Ho-seop, who was the head of the National Samsung Electronics Union, was not afraid to speak at a news conference on Friday. He said the current talks have essentially been a bonanza negotiation for the semiconductor memory segment “that was rushed.”
There was another union at that press conference, namely Samsung Electronics Co Union. It is made up of chip and non-chip workers. Those members were not immediately clear whether they could vote, as there were disagreements with other union blocs which led to the SECU withdrawing from the negotiating team before the final agreement was reached. The earlier poll had added to the confusion of the poll, which was already messy.
Humanly speaking, what is happening within Samsung is not as much a movement of workers as it is a bunch of different groups with conflicting interests. Everyone who has been in a large organisation will be able to tell you how easily resentment can rise when one department is rewarded to a great extent over another, particularly if the reasons for this are not due to individual merit but to the market forces. While the memory chip employees aren’t to blame for the AI hype, their co-workers in the consumer electronics industry are no doubt getting their “heads off”. They attend each day, achieve their goals and end up losing out on a bonus they might not have had a stake in creating.
The deadline for the voting is May twenty seventh. Meanwhile, the union members who work in Samsung’s vast operations will have to decide if they want to sign a deal that will see some of their co-workers become close to millionaires while others will take comparatively light bites. If the vote goes down, the two sides go back to the negotiating table and the spectre of a major strike looms. If it goes through, Samsung’s management will gain peace in the labour world but the root causes of the conflicts between the chip and non-chip employees need years to heal.
