Seoul, May 27 (IANS) Unionised workers at Samsung Electronics voted to approve a wage agreement, the union said on Wednesday, easing concerns about potential disruptions to the global supply chain.

In the six-day vote, 73.7 percent of the 62,616 members of the tech giant’s two largest unions approved the tentative deal. The agreement was finalised after a majority of eligible voters took part in the vote and a majority voted in favour of the proposal, reports Yonhap news agency.

The labour union and management reached the agreement just an hour before an 18-day strike was set to begin at the world’s top memory chipmaker last Thursday.

Labour and management had been deadlocked since late last year over performance-based bonuses tied to earnings from the company’s artificial intelligence-related semiconductor business amid the ongoing global memory chip boom.

Under the deal, Samsung will allocate a special semiconductor performance bonus equivalent to 10.5 percent of business performance earnings, without a cap.

The special bonuses will be paid in company stock over at least 10 years, based on targets for the chip division to achieve more than 200 trillion won (US$132 billion) in annual operating profit from 2026 to 2028 and 100 trillion won from 2029 to 2035.

Of the total bonus pool, 40 percent will be allocated to the division as a whole, while 60 percent will be distributed to individual business units.

Based on forecasts that Samsung’s operating profit could reach 300 trillion won this year, the agreement could translate into bonus payouts of up to 600 million won for each of the 28,000 employees in the company’s profitable chip division.

Meanwhile, a minor labour union led by members of the non-semiconductor unit of Samsung Electronics filed for a court injunction Tuesday, requesting a suspension of the vote on a tentative wage deal reached with management last week.

Unionised members said it made the legal request with the Suwon District Court earlier in the day, claiming the largest labor union at the company did not respect their rights to equality and to cast their votes.

“We will fight until the very end to seek and attain a rational alternative, for the marginalised union members of the device experience (DX) division,” the union said, adding it also plans to file a lawsuit to nullify the vote.

–IANS

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