As the Samsung Electronics labor union has signaled a general strike, internal conflict within the union is spreading. Discontent is growing that the union's demand for performance bonuses considered only members in the semiconductor institutional sector, and there is a surge in union withdrawals among members belonging to non-semiconductor institutional sectors.
According to the industry on the 3rd, withdrawal applications have recently increased on the website of the supra-enterprise union's Samsung Electronics branch. Withdrawal applications, which were usually fewer than 100 a day, exceeded 500 on the 28th of last month and reportedly surpassed 1,000 on the 29th. As posts certifying withdrawals spread mainly on the in-house bulletin board and office worker communities, this trend is continuing.
Members who withdrew say the supra-enterprise union makes decisions centered on the Device Solutions (DS) institutional sector, which handles the semiconductor business, and does not reflect the demands of members in other institutional sectors.
The supra-enterprise union is the only majority union within Samsung Electronics, and employees in the DS institutional sector, who account for about 80% of its members, are said to be leading this strike. The union is demanding that the DS institutional sector be paid performance bonuses equal to 15% of operating profit with no cap, but it has not presented a separate proposal for the relatively underperforming Device eXperience (DX) institutional sector.
The DX institutional sector, which is in charge of finished goods (set) businesses, saw its operating profit in the first quarter fall 36% from a year earlier due to the impact of semiconductor price hikes by the DS institutional sector under the same Samsung Electronics, and there is even talk of a full-year loss.
If the union's demands are reflected, executives and employees in the DS institutional sector could receive performance bonuses of up to about 600 million won per person this year, while the DX institutional sector, where paying bonuses is difficult, may even have to shoulder the burden of business restructuring. Samsung Electronics' refusal to accept the demand to abolish the bonus cap is seen as taking into account internal conflict from such disparities in compensation.
Meanwhile, the union is demanding the same treatment within the DS institutional sector for the loss-making business units of Foundry and System LSI. In the DX institutional sector, there is analysis that the union is seeking only to shore up cohesion within DS, excluding the relatively smaller DX institutional sector, in order to maintain majority-union status and push ahead with the strike.
It also became controversial when the union moved to recruit staff by saying it would pay 3 million won for at least 15 days of strike participation. In response, members are again taking issue with the January decision to raise monthly dues from 10,000 won to 50,000 won to establish a fund to guarantee status related to the right to strike. The reaction is that while not reflecting DX institutional sector demands, members are being asked to cover leadership expense and staff stipends with dues.
As union-versus-union conflict intensifies, observers say the union's representativeness and the justification for the strike will inevitably be weakened. However, since only about 20% of the approximately 74,000 total members of the supra-enterprise union belong to DX, the likelihood that the union will push ahead with the strike still appears high.