Employees in the DX (Device eXperience) institutional sector at Samsung Electronics have launched a collective action by coming to work dressed in black to protest pay gaps. As complaints grow that the compensation gap with the DS (Device Solutions) institutional sector, which handles the semiconductor business, is excessively large, the number of union members centered on the DX institutional sector is also rising quickly.
According to the Samsung Electronics union Donghaeng on the 18th, DX institutional sector employees held a campaign that day to come to work wearing black clothes or black masks at business sites including the Suwon headquarters in Gyeonggi. Donghaeng said it ran the campaign at the Gangdong business site on the 10th and the Gumi business site on the 16th, and held it at the Suwon business site that day, with plans to continue related activities at the Gwangju business site on the 23rd and the Umyeon business site on the 24th.
The union is encouraging members to change their in-house profile nicknames to "same company, same rights" and to defer signing their annual salary contracts. As dissatisfaction over the criteria for paying performance bonuses grows, union membership has also surged. As of the day, Donghaeng had 26,117 members, surpassing half of the 51,717 employees in the DX institutional sector.
Earlier, labor and management at Samsung Electronics agreed on a wage deal that includes creating a special management performance bonus reflecting semiconductor business results. Under the agreement, employees in the Memory Business Division of the DS institutional sector can receive compensation totaling up to several hundred million won by combining the special management performance bonus and the over-profit incentive (OPI), while employees in the DX institutional sector, where weak results are expected, are projected to receive relatively smaller compensation.
Donghaeng plans to hold a meeting with the head of the People Team in the DX institutional sector on the 23rd, and afterward aims to seek a meeting with Chief Executive Officer and DX head Roh Tae-Moon.