Unprecedented! Samsung salary negotiations break down, facing the largest strike in history: memory supply could be severely impacted

TechNews on March 9 reports that Samsung Electronics is facing its largest strike crisis since its founding.

Due to the breakdown of salary negotiations, the Samsung Electronics Union Joint Struggle Headquarters, representing over 89,000 employees (more than 60% of the company’s total workforce), announced a full-scale strike vote from March 9 to 18.

If the vote passes, the union plans to hold a member rally on April 23 and conduct an 18-day nationwide general strike from May 21 to June 7.

The core of this dispute revolves around the fairness of the Performance Bonus (OPI) system. The union demands the removal of the 50% annual salary cap on excess profit-based OPI and proposes replacing Economic Value Added (EVA) with Operating Profit as the calculation benchmark.

Industry insiders reveal that employees in Samsung’s semiconductor division receive significantly lower bonuses compared to peers at SK Hynix. An employee earning 100 million KRW annually might receive about 50 million KRW in OPI bonuses at Samsung, whereas at SK Hynix, it could be as high as 150 million KRW.

After over eight months of negotiations, the talks broke down earlier this month. The Korea Labor Relations Commission announced the suspension of mediation, and the union has obtained legal strike eligibility.

To ensure high participation, the union even stated it would establish a list of members willing to continue working during the strike and prioritize handling issues like forced transfers and dismissals involving those on the list. They also plan to reward employees who report “non-cooperative” behavior.

Currently, Samsung is fully supplying HBM4 memory for NVIDIA’s next-generation AI accelerators. Due to the long production cycle and complex process of high-bandwidth memory, the strike in May is likely to disrupt shipment schedules, potentially reducing yield rates or output.