Samsung's memory chip employees negotiated $340k bonuses this year
But the deal may still be a win for Samsung, with smaller payouts than at local rival SK Hynix.
Details have emerged about a tentative deal struck between Samsung and semiconductor employees who had threatened to strike. The deal reportedly makes some workers eligible for average annual bonuses of $340,000.
The proposed 18-day strike had hinged on Samsung’s bonus cap for employees in the semiconductor division and followed a substantial rise in the possible bonuses available to employees of SK Hynix, another South Korean chipmaker enjoying a boom thanks to demand for AI components.
Under the terms of the new deal, Reuters reports that all chip workers will receive 50 percent of their annual salary as a regular bonus in cash. Further to that, Samsung will set aside 10.5 percent of its annual operating profits to issue stock-based bonuses to semiconductor employees.
Much of the negotiation hinged on how those stock bonuses would be distributed, according to The New York Times . The final deal sees 40 percent of the total pot spread across the entire semiconductor division, which includes lossmaking units working on logic chips and third-party components, with the remainder specifically for the memory chip unit, which is driving the current boom. The union had wanted a larger share of the bonuses to be spread equally among staff.
According to Reuters , a memory chip worker on a base salary of around $50,000 could now be eligible for a total bonus of $416,000. It appears at least some employees have already found ways to spend those bonuses.