Within about 20 hours of opening, union voting on Samsung Electronics' 2026 wage and performance bonus tentative agreement surpassed a 70% turnout. As infighting among unions continues over who is eligible to vote, members are quickly registering their yes-or-no choices on the tentative deal.
The cross-company union's Samsung Electronics chapter said at 10:40 a.m. on the 23rd that 42,551 people had participated in the "2026 wage and performance bonus agreement tentative deal vote." Of the cross-company union members, 57,290 are eligible to take part in this vote, putting turnout at 74.27%. As of 5:30 p.m. the previous day, turnout was 57.40% (32,882 people). In roughly 17 hours, an additional 9,669 people cast ballots.
Voting on the Samsung Electronics tentative agreement began at 2 p.m. on the 22nd and runs until 10 a.m. on the 27th. Cross-company union Chairperson Choi Seung-ho said, "Once the vote ends, the results will be made public so that all members who voted can see them." Voting rights are granted to members whose names were on the union roster at 2 p.m. on the 21st, one day before the vote opened. If a majority of members participate and a majority of those vote yes, the tentative deal passes. If it fails, labor and management must return to the bargaining table.
As of 5 p.m. the previous day, the cross-company union members who negotiated this tentative labor-management agreement numbered 71,075. But the electorate totals only 57,290. Chairperson Choi explained, "Under the cross-company union's bylaws, voting rights are granted to members who currently hold full rights and who paid April union dues via the cash management service (CMS)." Members with full rights are those who have paid dues normally and can exercise union rights such as voting.
Cross-company union members are centered on employees in the DS (semiconductor) division. The memory business unit has about 24,000 people, and non-memory has about 17,000. The DS common organization has about 22,000, and the customer service (CSS) task force and other groups total about 1,000. Members from DX (finished goods) number only about 8,000.
Because the tentative deal concentrates rewards in the DS institutional sector, backlash is growing among employees in the DX institutional sector. This has led to a surge in membership in the Samsung Electronics Labor Union Together (Together Union), which is centered on DX. The Together Union's membership rose from about 2,200 last month to around 12,800 just before the vote. DX employees joined the Together Union en masse to express opposition to the tentative agreement.
However, the cross-company union sent an official letter to the Together Union and formally rejected its request for voting rights. The cross-company union's position is that the Together Union lost its status as a participating union after notifying on the 4th that it was withdrawing from the joint bargaining team. Since the tentative deal was signed on the 20th between the joint bargaining team and management, only members of the cross-company union and the National Samsung Electronics Labor Union (Jeonsamno) who were on the joint bargaining team on the signing day have voting rights. The Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) also offered an interpretation to the effect that there is no obligation to grant voting rights to Together Union members who were not participating in joint bargaining at the time the tentative deal was concluded.
The core of the tentative agreement is to keep the existing over-profit incentive (OPI) while separately creating a DS institutional sector special management performance bonus. The DS special management performance bonus fund is set at 10.5% of business performance, as agreed by labor and management. Including the OPI fund, the bonus pool for DS employees equals about 12% of business performance.
The DS special management performance bonus will be allocated 40% at the institutional sector level and 60% at the business unit level. The payout rate for the common organization is calculated at about 70% of the memory business unit's payout rate. Based on an annual salary of 80 million won, a memory business unit employee could receive up to around 600 million won in bonuses, according to calculations. There is also analysis that employees in non-memory, such as System LSI and foundry, which are loss-making units, could receive bonuses averaging in the 200 million won range.
By contrast, the DX institutional sector, which handles smartphones, home appliances, and TVs, and the customer service (CSS) task force were limited to company stock worth 6 million won. With expectations running high that DX will continue to post weak results this year, the existing OPI size is also likely to be set low. Because of this, internal sentiment on the tentative deal is seen as "memory in favor, non-memory mixed, DX opposed."
Given the high share of DS institutional sector employees in the cross-company union, industry watchers see a strong chance the vote will pass. Still, with controversy over excluded voting rights and discontent over pay gaps among business units surfacing at the same time, "union-versus-union" conflict is expected to persist even after the deal is processed.