The Samsung Electronics union will launch a general strike in May, the first in two years.
On the 18th, the Samsung Electronics union joint struggle headquarters said it had secured the legal right to strike with a 93.1% approval rate in a strike ballot held since on the 9th.
Unions that took part in the vote include the nationwide Samsung Electronics Labor Union, the Samsung Electronics Union Donghaeng, and the Samsung Electronics Branch, an enterprise-agnostic union that has secured more than 60,000 members, a majority of the total. In this vote, 60,619 of about 90,000 eligible members across the three unions participated, posting a turnout of 73.5%, and 61,456 voted in favor.
Previously, after the Central Labor Relations Commission halted mediation, the union secured the legal right to strike through this vote. The joint struggle headquarters plans to hold a rally on Apr. 23 and continue actions through the general strike in May, demanding normalization of performance bonuses and a fair compensation system.
If a general strike breaks out at Samsung Electronics, it will be the first in about two years since July 2024 and the second strike since its founding in 1969.
For the 2026 wage talks, the union's key demands are to make the criteria for calculating performance bonuses transparent, abolish the cap on performance bonuses, and raise wages by 7%.
The joint struggle headquarters formed a joint bargaining team in Nov. last year and held wage talks with management for about three months. But with little narrowing of positions, the union declared a breakdown in talks on the 19th of last month and applied for mediation by the Central Labor Relations Commission.
After the Central Labor Relations Commission decided to halt mediation at the second mediation meeting on the 3rd, the union converted the joint bargaining team into the joint struggle headquarters and began securing the right to strike, including by holding a strike ballot.
According to details Samsung Electronics disclosed after the talks collapsed, management, in line with the union's demand for transparency in the performance bonus system, proposed allowing employees to choose the excess profit incentive (OPI) pool based on either 20% of economic value added (EVA) or 10% of operating profit.
It also offered various pay and benefits improvements, including a 6.2% wage increase, 20 shares of company stock, higher salary caps by rank, and expanded long-service leave.
The DS (Device Solutions) division in charge of the semiconductor business also proposed special rewards, such as an additional 100% OPI payout if operating profit reaches 100 trillion won.
However, while the union left room for differentiated application of OPI payouts among divisions and lowered its demand for base pay increases, it did not give up its demand to abolish the OPI cap.
Management opposed, citing that many divisions that would find it difficult to exceed OPI targets could feel relatively deprived if the cap were abolished, leading to a breakdown in negotiations.