That they had failed to succeed in an settlement relating to employee bonuses.
Almost 48,000 Samsung employees in South Korea, which make up 38 % of the corporate’s workforce within the nation, are planning to walk out on Could 21 for an 18-day strike. The corporate and its largest labor union had been in negotiations, and union chief Choi Seung-ho mentioned his group had accepted the ultimate proposal introduced by a authorities mediator. Nonetheless, the strike remains to be pushing by after the events failed to succeed in an settlement on one necessary situation: Bonuses.
The union is asking Samsung to take away the cap on employees’ bonuses, which is equal to 50 % of their annual salaries. Additional, it is pushing for Samsung to allocate 15 % of its annual working revenue to employee bonuses. Samsung is at present the world’s largest DRAM maker by income and has not too long ago been posting file revenues and earnings, principally due to its reminiscence enterprise. For the primary quarter of 2026, the division that features its reminiscence enterprise posted KRW 53.7 trillion ($35.63 billion) in working revenue. That is a lot of the firm’s total working revenue of KRW 57.2 ($37.96 billion) trillion for the quarter.
Many of the employees occurring strike belong to the corporate’s reminiscence division, so the walkout may disrupt the operations of the corporate’s greatest moneymaker. The employees stand to earn large bonuses value tens of millions of {dollars} if Samsung agrees to the union’s calls for, however the firm known as the union’s phrases “unacceptable.” It mentioned in a statement that the explanation an settlement could not be reached was as a result of “accepting the labor union’s extreme calls for would undermine the basic ideas of firm administration.” The union argued that employees at Samsung rival SK Hynix obtained bonuses 3 times larger than they did final 12 months.
Despite the fact that the union will push by with the strike, Samsung was capable of persuade the courtroom to grant it an injunction. The courtroom has required the union to make 7,087 employees report back to work in the course of the strike to maintain a few of its manufacturing services operating. That mentioned, the state of affairs may nonetheless change earlier than Thursday. Samsung said that it “won’t surrender on dialogue till the final second” and that “there have to be no strikes underneath any circumstances.” South Korean labor commissioner Park Soo-keun mentioned the federal government is able to mediate anytime if the events determine to return to the negotiating desk.
