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Samsung chip workers vote to accept $340,000 average bonus, ending months-long strike threat — resentment over deal has slowed down Samsung foundry division
Samsung Electronics' largest union has ratified a compensation deal that will pay semiconductor workers an average bonus of roughly $340,000, according to Bloomberg. About 74% of the union's members voted in favor of the agreement, which was first reached last week, just 90 minutes before an 18-day general strike was set to begin at the world's largest memory chipmaker. But the deal has deepened internal rifts at the company: some memory division employees stand to receive 600 million won ($400,000) while staff in Samsung's smartphone, TV, and appliance divisions are looking at payouts of just 6 million won ($4,000).
The agreement allocates 10.5% of Samsung's semiconductor division operating profit as stock-based bonuses, with an additional 1.5% in cash, plus a 6.2% average wage increase. The program runs for 10 years, contingent on the division hitting some lofty annual operating profit targets. Based on Bloomberg's projections of Samsung's 2026 operating profit at approximately 330 trillion won, the total bonus pool for the company's 78,000 semiconductor employees could reach roughly 40 trillion won ($26.6 billion).
The vote puts months of escalating labor unrest to an end, unrest that saw more than 40,000 workers rally in April, causing night-shift fab output to fall by 58%. Workers had compared their compensation unfavorably to rival SK hynix, which offered more generous bonuses last year. But while the strike threat is over, the resentment it exposed isn’t; only about 21% of Samsung's smaller union, which represents mostly non-chip staff, approved the agreement.
This resentment has led to work slowdowns that have spread to Samsung’s foundry and TSP (Test & Package) divisions, with meetings being canceled and decision-making on major projects reportedly at a standstill. TSP handles the back-end packaging and testing essential to producing high-bandwidth memory, and disruptions there could complicate Samsung's HBM4 production ramp for Nvidia's next-gen Rubin AI accelerators.
Samsung’s DX division head, TM Roh, said, “I understand that the recent wage negotiation process and its outcome have left many of you feeling alienated, deprived, and perhaps disappointed or hurt by the company,” in an internal memo following the signing of the deal. “I will personally oversee and examine what needs to change in each business unit, where we need to focus more boldly, and what is most urgently needed on the front lines.”
The vote came on a milestone day for the memory sector, with SK hynix and Micron both crossing the $1 trillion market cap mark early Wednesday, joining Samsung, which breached the same threshold last month. Samsung's challenge now is keeping its memory, foundry, and packaging teams functioning while one group of employees has received a historic windfall and the other hasn’t — and isn’t happy about it.
Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.
