SEOUL — A Samsung Electronics’ union representing the conglomerate’s consumer electronics workers said on Tuesday it has asked a South Korean court to block a vote on a pay deal that primarily benefits their colleagues in the company’s chip divisions.
The government-mediated agreement reached last week, which averted an 18-day strike by 48,000 workers, provides huge bonuses for workers in Samsung’s memory chip division, which has seen profits soar amid the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.
Voting by unionized workers began on Friday and is due to conclude on Wednesday morning. The Samsung Electronics Co. Union (SECU), which has about 13,000 members, mostly from the company’s smartphone, TV and home appliances divisions, said in a statement that it had taken legal action after being told it had no right to join the vote.
Disagreements caused the SECU to leave the negotiating team before the agreement was reached.
Debate over sharing AI riches
Negotiations were led by the Samsung Electronics Labor Union, which said on Tuesday that more than 90 percent of its 57,290 members who are eligible to vote had cast their ballot.
Approval requires a simple majority of eligible unionized members to vote in favor and a majority of those members to take part. Otherwise, negotiations must restart from scratch.
A separate union, the National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), which has also said it is upset with the terms of the deal, will boycott the vote, Yonhap news reported.
The NSEU, which represents both chip and non-chip workers, has some 20,000 members, according to its website.
Samsung accounts for about a quarter of the country’s exports, and the deal has sparked much relief across South Korea. The dispute has, however, exposed deep divisions over how the spoils of the AI boom should be shared.
Some of the company’s memory chip workers are set to receive total bonuses of about $416,000 this year.
Workers in Samsung’s foundry and logic chip design units will receive much smaller but still substantial bonuses, while those employed in other divisions like smartphones and home appliances will receive even smaller bonuses.
A small group of individual shareholders has also announced that they will sue if the deal is ratified by union members, arguing that parts of the agreement were unlawful unless they were approved by shareholders.
Samsung’s shares were up 2.7 percent in morning trade. They have gained nearly 9 percent since the deal was struck last week, though that rise has underperformed a 19-percent surge for rival SK Hynix.
