The labor-management landscape at Samsung Electronics is shifting. The largest union, which led the wage negotiations, lost its majority status just two weeks after reaching an agreement, and the power structure surrounding worker representation is being reshaped.
As of 3 p.m. yesterday (the 4th), membership in the Samsung Electronics branch of the Samsung Group’s supra-company union was tallied at 58,270. That is about 6,000 short of the majority threshold of 64,440, which is half of the company’s total 128,881 employees. An organization that had once exceeded 76,000 members has shrunk to roughly half its size in just over a month.
The split triggered by performance pay
The cause of the exodus is clear: the performance-based bonus system. The tentative agreement reached on the 20th of last month sharply widened compensation by division, and that gap undermined organizational cohesion.
Under the agreement, assuming operating profit of 300 trillion won this year, employees in the memory business of the DS (Device Solutions; semiconductors) division would receive about 550 million won in special management performance pay plus 50 million won in operating profit incentive (OPI), for a total of around 600 million won. Employees in the DX (Device eXperience; finished products) division would receive only about 6 million won worth of company stock.
Even within semiconductors, the gap is significant. Non-memory units such as System LSI and foundry, which are expected to remain in the red, receive only 40% of the DS division’s shared pool, capping their bonuses at 160 million won. The scale of compensation itself has become different depending on the job category.
The bond that held together different job groups within a single organization showed its limits the moment the deal was reached. The result of placing groups with directly conflicting interests at the same bargaining table.
The vote breakdown bears this out. In the vote that closed on the 27th of last month, support stood at 80.6% (44,606 members). The prevailing analysis is that the 19.4% who voted against it (10,727 members) left the union 그대로.
Fading representative power
The weakening of its numbers translates directly into a loss of legal standing. The chair of a majority union has had the authority to directly appoint worker committee members and lead the labor-management council. That power is now gone.
Its bargaining leverage has also weakened. Ahead of next year’s wage and collective agreement negotiations, it will be harder to secure exclusive leadership when unifying the bargaining window with the second-largest union, the National Samsung Electronics Labor Union (Jeon Samsno), and the third-largest union, Samsung Electronics Labor Union Donghaeng.
Its representative status does not disappear immediately. If it forms a joint bargaining group with other unions and maintains a majority of workers, the binding force of the collective agreement will be preserved. But who leads that process is another matter.
A reorganizing labor landscape
Departing members are moving to the second- and third-largest unions.
Jeon Samsno grew from 16,000 members on the 20th of last month to 20,968 yesterday. Donghaeng, which had been in the 2,600 range immediately after the agreement, surged to 21,015. The weakening of the largest union has turned into growth for its rival unions.
The supra-company union is moving to stabilize the situation. It plans to promote a “two-track bargaining” system by separating the DS and DX division leadership structures, and it will seek to reorganize the group through a vote of confidence in the chair scheduled for the 17th.
The essence of this episode is that differences in compensation determine the cohesion of labor organizations. In a large business where interests diverge across job groups, the assumption that a single union can naturally represent everyone is no longer self-evident.