By Heekyong Yang and Heejin Kim
SEOUL, May 26 (Reuters) – A Samsung Electronics union representing the conglomerate’s consumer electronics workers said on Tuesday it has asked a South Korean court to block a vote on a pay deal that primarily benefits their colleagues in the company’s chip divisions.
The government-mediated agreement reached last week, which averted an 18-day strike by 48,000 workers, provides huge bonuses for workers in Samsung’s memory chip division, which has seen profits soar amid the AI boom.
Voting by unionised workers began on Friday and is due to conclude on Wednesday morning. They are widely expected to ratify the deal.
The Samsung Electronics Co Union (SECU), which has about 13,000 members, mostly from the company’s smartphone, TV and home appliances divisions, said in a statement that it had taken legal action after being told it had no right to join the vote.
Disagreements caused the SECU to leave the negotiating team before the agreement was reached.
DEBATE OVER SHARING AI RICHES
Negotiations were led by the Samsung Electronics Labor Union (SELU), which said on Tuesday that more than 90% of its 57,290 members who are eligible to vote had cast their ballot. How they voted was not disclosed.
Approval requires a majority of eligible unionised members to take part and a majority of those members to vote in favour. Otherwise negotiations must restart from scratch.
Some consumer electronics employees at a separate union, the National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) that has also said it is upset with the terms of the deal, are voting against the deal, NSEU official Lee Ho-seok told Reuters.
He said some foundry workers in Samsung’s chip division are also frustrated with the deal, and expressed hope that the deal would be voted down, even if that may be unlikely.
“We hope to pull off a miracle,” he said.
The NSEU has some 20,000 members, according to its website. The majority are chip workers.
Samsung accounts for about a quarter of the country’s exports, and the deal has sparked much relief across South Korea. The dispute has, however, exposed deep divisions over how the spoils of the AI boom should be shared.
Some of the company’s memory chip workers are set to receive total bonuses of about $416,000 this year.
Workers in Samsung’s foundry and logic chip design units will receive much smaller but still substantial bonuses, while those employed in other divisions like smartphones and home appliances will receive even smaller bonuses.
A small group of individual shareholders has also announced that they will sue if the deal is ratified by union members, arguing that parts of the agreement were unlawful unless they were approved by shareholders.
Samsung’s shares ended 2.2% higher on Tuesday. They have gained 8% since the deal was struck last week, though that rise has underperformed an 18% surge for rival SK Hynix.
(Reporting by Heejin Kim and Heekyong Yang, Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Ed Davies and Edwina Gibbs)
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