Yeo Myung-koo, left, Samsung Electronics' chief management negotiator and head of the Device Solutions division's People Team, and Choi Seung-ho, right, head of the Samsung Electronics chapter of the Samsung Group United Union, leave the negotiating room at the National Labor Relations Commission in Sejong on May 18 after the first day of a second round of post-mediation talks. [YONHAP]
Samsung Electronics' management and labor remain deadlocked Tuesday as their final round of post-mediation talks got underway. With no deal in sight over a dispute on how to overhaul the company's performance bonus system, a standoff is now threatening to split the union itself.
The closed-door session at the National Labor Relations Commission's Sejong office began at 10 a.m. Tuesday, after the Monday meeting failed to close the gap. Commission Chairman Park Soo-keun told reporters there was still room for a deal.
“There's still a possibility of an agreement between the two sides and the differences are narrowing,” Park said.
“We'll wrap up the negotiations by 7 p.m. if at all possible.” He added that the commission planned to walk through the unresolved points from the previous day with both sides.
Monday's session saw the formula for distributing the performance bonus fund emerge as the main flashpoint. Union leadership has proposed allocating 70 percent of the fund at the division level and 30 percent at the individual business unit level — a structure intended to soften the gap between business units and ensure that employees at the loss-making System LSI and Foundry units still receive some compensation.
Samsung Electronics' Pyeongtaek Campus in Gyeonggi as seen on May 19, the second day of the second round of post-mediation talks between the company's management and union at the National Labor Relations Commission in Sejong. The union plans an 18-day general strike of some 50,000 workers from May 21 through June 7. [YONHAP]
The company has pushed back. Management has warned that an outsize division-wide pool would effectively put employees at money-losing units on par with those at profitable ones. The shift would undercut Samsung's longstanding pay-for-performance principle.
Both System LSI and Foundry are again expected to operate in the red this year. Inside Samsung, this has raised concerns that lifting the division-wide share to 70 percent would sharply narrow the bonus gap between the strongly performing memory business and weaker units.
Pushback from rank-and-file employees has also surfaced.
“It's hard to accept a structure where the chronically loss-making System LSI and Foundry get performance bonuses on par with Memory,” a worker who identified themselves as a member of the Semiconductor R&D Center wrote on an internal message board.
The same post argued for raising the business-unit weighting to “30 percent at the division level and 70 percent at the business unit level.”
Choi Seung-ho, head of the Samsung Electronics chapter of the Samsung Group United Union, enters the mediation conference room at the National Labor Relations Commission in Sejong on May 19 for the second day of a second round of post-mediation talks, two days before the union's planned general strike. [YONHAP]
Industry watchers warn that overcompensating loss-making units could erode internal discipline and set a negative precedent for the wider corporate sector.
“If Samsung Electronics produces an agreement that lacks fairness and reasonableness in evaluation, this is an issue that could affect other companies as well,” said Jeon Hye-sun, a labor attorney at Yeollin Labor.
“There's a high chance this spreads as significant fallout across the entire performance compensation system.”
A more realistic compromise of 40 percent division-wide and 60 percent at the business unit level is also reportedly being floated internally, though the gap between labor and management makes a near-term deal unlikely.
Internal union conflict has continued in parallel.
“Once this wraps up, let's think about splitting the union. National Samsung Electronics Union [NSEU] and Samsung Electronics Labor Union [SELU] are too much,” wrote Choi Seung-ho, head of the Samsung Electronics chapter of the Samsung Group United Union, in a cross-affiliate communication channel on Telegram on Monday.
“Honestly, I can't deal with DX [the company's Device eXperience division] anymore.”
Choi Seung-ho, head of the Samsung Electronics chapter of the Samsung Group United Union, leaves the National Labor Relations Commission in Sejong on May 18 while answering reporters' questions following the first day of a second round of post-mediation talks. [YONHAP]
After the post drew criticism, he deleted it and apologized on a separate channel for “mistakenly posting a vent meant for leadership.”
The union's vice chair, Lee Song-yi, had also drawn internal backlash with similar comments about the DX division.
“If they want to spin off, let them. We who brought it this far will take responsibility,” he said.
Choi's remarks are seen as fallout from a clash at Monday's session with the NSEU and the SELU. The two unions oppose a bonus proposal centered on the Device Solutions (DS) semiconductor division. They staged a picket protest outside the negotiating room and demanded the company “reflect the voices of 50,000 DX division employees.”
“For a union that calls itself cross-affiliate, it is actually building the walls higher between divisions,” one industry source said.
“Ignoring the voices of some 50,000 DX division employees while focusing on supporting loss-making units within DS is the union denying its own identity.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
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