Samsung Electronics labor and management resumed talks at 4:20 p.m. on the 20th. In this round of talks, Minister Kim Young-hoon of the Ministry of Employment and Labor served as mediator.
The ministry said in a notice to the press corps that "talks began at 4:20 p.m. with the labor-management chief negotiators participating and are currently underway." As with the post-adjustment by the Central Labor Relations Commission, attending this round were Choi Seung-ho, Chairperson of the Supra-Enterprise Labor Union's Samsung Electronics chapter, for the Samsung Electronics union, and Yeo Myung-gu, executive vice president and head of the DS (semiconductor institutional sector) People Team, for management.
A ministry official said, "This is a separate procedure from the Central Labor Relations Commission's post-adjustment," adding, "It is a level of support in which the Minister of Labor assists labor-management negotiations between the parties."
This day is the final deadline for negotiations just before the general strike start time (the 21st) announced by the Samsung Electronics union. It is seen as the labor minister stepping in directly to mediate in light of the impact a Samsung Electronics strike could have on the national economy.
Earlier, Samsung Electronics labor and management underwent post-adjustment, a mediation procedure of the Central Labor Relations Commission, for three days from the 18th to the 20th but failed to reach a deal. The two sides agreed to pay bonuses as a set percentage of operating profit, but reportedly could not find common ground on how much to allocate to loss-making divisions.
The union is said to have demanded a method in which 70% of the total bonus pool is allocated commonly across all divisions, with the remaining 30% paid differentially by division performance, such as memory, foundry, system LSI, and smartphones. In contrast, management was reported to have argued for lowering the common institutional sector pool share to around 40% and raising the division-based differential payment share to as high as 60%.
Meanwhile, if the talks chaired by the labor minister break down, the Samsung Electronics union can go on a general strike. In that case, the government was said to be considering invoking emergency arbitration powers to forcibly suspend the strike.