Overview
- Samsung Electronics' labor union is pressing for 15% of annual operating profit to be paid as cash bonuses after negotiations collapsed.
- Company leaders reject a fixed profit share and say current packages already match the industry's best pay.
- Under the union's formula, most money would flow to the semiconductor unit, with union estimates of about 620 million won before tax per memory employee on average.
- The total payout could reach about 45 trillion won, which exceeds last year's 37.7 trillion won research budget and is about four times the roughly 11.1 trillion won paid in dividends.
- Tensions deepened after lists naming nonunion employees spread in work chats, prompting a Samsung criminal complaint over personal data, while the union set a protest and threatened an 18‑day general strike if no deal is reached.