Samsung’s Massive Pay Gap: Why One Division Gets 100x More

[ANCHOR] Voting on the Samsung Electronics labor union’s tentative wage agreement has entered its third day. With turnout roughly 83%, internal opposition is growing over unequal performance bonuses across business units. For details, we go to our reporter Su-bin Kim. Su-bin? [REPORTER] Yes. Voting by Samsung Electronics union members on the tentative wage agreement has continued into its third day. As of 10:36 a.m. on the 24th, participation in the Samsung Group cross-company union vote stood at 82.86%. About 47,000 of roughly 57,000 union members have cast ballots. Turnout surpassed 80% last night and has remained in the low-80s since. Balloting began the afternoon of the 22nd and will continue through 10 a.m. on the 27th. Some 66,000 members across the cross-company union and the National Samsung Electronics Union were eligible to vote. Under the rules, the tentative agreement requires a majority of eligible voters to participate and a majority of votes cast to approve it. The centerpiece of the proposal is awarding shares to the DS division, which oversees semiconductors, as a special management performance bonus. The controversy lies in the wide disparities in payouts by division. Observers estimate memory division employees could receive up to 600 million KRW (approximately $450,000), while non-memory division staff might get about 200 million KRW (approximately $150,000). By contrast, employees in the DX division, which handles smartphones and TVs, would receive performance bonuses of around 6 million KRW (about $4,500) — nearly a 100-fold gap. As the division-by-division gap widened, the National Samsung Electronics Union and Samsung Electronics’ Donghaeng union launched a campaign to reject the deal. Meanwhile, Choi Seung-ho, chair of the cross-company union, said he will hold a confidence vote on his chairmanship next month regardless of the outcome of this balloting. Shareholders have also pushed back. Retail shareholder platform ACT said today that Samsung accepted a request to inspect the shareholder registry. The shareholder group plans to demand an extraordinary general meeting once it secures the registry and intends to seek an injunction to suspend the agreement’s effect and file a suit to have it declared void. That’s the report from the news desk. #SamsungElectronics #performanceBonus #laborNegotiations #tentativeAgreement #crossCompanyUnion #shareholderGroup Yonhap News TV — News tips and inquiries: KakaoTalk/Line jebo23; Su-bin Kim (soup@yna.co.kr)