By Heekyong Yang and Hyunjoo Jin <\/p>\n
SEOUL, Aug 13 (Reuters) – Workers at SK Hynix on Thursday launched a new labour union in South Korea, seeking to bring together employees across different \u200cjob categories and locations as they pursue greater bargaining power at the leading memory chipmaker. <\/p>\n
The \u200claunch comes as SK Hynix and its existing unions are locking horns over annual wage talks, after the chipmaker posted record quarterly \u200bprofits on strong demand for AI infrastructure. <\/p>\n
Nearly 2,500 SK Hynix workers have joined the new union, according to its website. The union was formally launched after the government approved an application. SK Hynix has nearly 35,000 employees in South Korea. <\/p>\n
Unlike existing unions organised around particular job categories or workplaces, the new union aims to represent \u200cemployees across SK Hynix’s operations, including factory \u2060workers in Icheon, Cheongju, as well as technical and office staff. <\/p>\n
Its immediate goal is to become a majority union by signing up more than half of the \u2060company’s workforce, which would give it greater influence in negotiations with management. <\/p>\n
CONTROL OVER COLLECTIVE BARGAINING <\/p>\n
The chipmaker last year agreed with its union to allocate 10% of annual operating profit to employee bonuses in cash under a deal that would \u200bremain \u200bin place for 10 years. <\/p>\n
But SK Hynix this year \u200bproposed paying a majority of workers’ bonuses in \u200cshares rather than cash, after its peer Samsung Electronics agreed on similar terms earlier this year. <\/p>\n
Park Ji-soon, a social security law professor at Korea University’s School of Law, said the launch could trigger competition among unions for members, as becoming the majority union is key to securing control over collective bargaining. <\/p>\n
He said a shift towards stock-based bonuses could prompt unions to seek other benefits such as housing loans comparable with those \u200cat rival Samsung Electronics. <\/p>\n
Kim Yong-jin, a management professor at Sogang \u200bUniversity, said while workers’ concerns over stock compensation were understandable, \u200bgiven the volatility of Korean stocks, equity-based bonuses \u200bwere common in the United States. <\/p>\n
Investors have also questioned whether allocating 10% of \u200coperating profit to employees reduces funds available for \u200binvestment or shareholder returns. <\/p>\n
In May, \u200bSamsung Electronics and its unionised workers agreed on a deal on performance pay, averting a major strike at the chip giant that had threatened to disrupt supplies. Samsung agreed to allocate 10.5% of \u200bits annual semiconductor operating profit to \u200cspecial bonuses for chip workers. The bonuses would be paid in company stock, with the \u200bimmediate sale of over a majority of the shares to be restricted. <\/p>\n
($1 = 1,417.7400 won) <\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bHeekyong Yang and Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Alison Williams) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Heekyong Yang and Hyunjoo Jin SEOUL, Aug 13 (Reuters) – Workers at SK Hynix on Thursday launched…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[21215,171,10355,613,276,275,33,11793],"class_list":["post-120412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-chip-workers","tag-korean","tag-labour-union","tag-operating-profit","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-sk-hynix","tag-south-korea","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}