Workers at Samsung’s Device Solutions (the company’s semiconductor arm) were threatening to strike back in May, but their union and the company signed a deal that opened the gates to massive performance bonuses. That is not the end of the story, though, as another union that represents another branch is now unhappy with the bonus disparity.
Samsung’s Device Experience (DX) branch builds smartphones, TVs and home appliances. Their union is planning to hold a rally near the Samsung Electronics Suwon plant on July 16.
The reason is simple – workers in the non-chip divisions are expected to receive bonuses of KRW 6 million. Meanwhile, their peers at the DS division are looking at bonuses that are a hundred times bigger – KRW 600 million.
As an early form of protest, DX workers wore black to work last month. Now, 2-3,000 of them (from a total of 28,000 in the union) are expected to rally in front of the Suwon plant next week.
“We plan to hold a rally during this year’s wage talks to protest the unfair sidelining of the DX division,” said one representative (machine translation).
Samsung DX employees showing up to work in black clothes as a form of protest
Samsung Electronics is expected to announce a massive 18x increase in operating profit for Q2. According to Reutersthe second quarter of this year (April-June) likely saw Samsung rake in KRW 86 trillion in operating profit ($56.4 billion), up from KRW 4.7 trillion in Q2 2025.
This growth was largely driven by DRAM, HBM and NAND chips. And per its deal with its employees, Samsung will distribute 10.5% of the DS operating profits as performance bonuses for employees within the semiconductor division. We will get more details when the Q2 report comes out.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings