By Kyu-seok Shim and Hyunjoo Jin<\/p>\n
PYEONGTAEK, South Korea, May 21 (Reuters) – Around Samsung Electronics’ sprawling chip complex southwest of Seoul, workers and residents have met news of a last-gasp pay agreement to prevent a strike with both relief and \u200cconcern.<\/p>\n
The complex is the firm’s largest semiconductor production site, manufacturing a range of chips that have been in high demand \u200cfrom an artificial intelligence boom and generating record profits – but also stoking union demands for a fairer share.<\/p>\n
The tentative pay deal has sparked relief in South Korea, given \u200bSamsung’s importance to the economy, while raising hopes among businesses in the neighbourhood around the complex.<\/p>\n
“If employees receive performance bonuses as a result of this general strike, I think restaurants near Samsung will benefit greatly, including through company dinners and group meals,\u201d said Lee Se-hee, who owns a fine dining restaurant in Pyeongtaek, a city of around 650,000 people.<\/p>\n
The deal has, however, also exposed some divisions among employees, with some workers in the \u200cmemory chip division standing to receive bonuses of around $416,000, \u2060sparking fears that workers in less lucrative units will be left behind.<\/p>\n
“It’s a huge disappointment,” said a foundry engineer in Pyeongtaek who works in the foundry division that is focused on logic chips.<\/p>\n
“It looks like those \u2060who can switch to SK Hynix will keep applying, while others will try to transfer internally to the memory division,” he said, asking not to be named publicly due to the sensitivity of the matter.<\/p>\n
At rival chipmaker SK Hynix, some workers received three times more performance pay last year than \u200bSamsung \u200bworkers, a disparity that helped drive the frustration among Samsung workers and the \u200bdefection of workers to SK Hynix.<\/p>\n
“The memory colleagues seem \u200cto be satisfied with the total amount, but a bit disappointed because they were paid in stock,” said the engineer, referring to Samsung’s plan to pay much of the performance bonuses in shares.<\/p>\n
‘TRICKLE DOWN’<\/p>\n
About 14,000 employees work at Samsung’s Pyeongtaek campus, though a real estate agent in the city said a trickle-down effect was unlikely unless more staffers based themselves in the city and because bonuses are due to be mainly paid in shares.<\/p>\n
“For local subcontractors, this strike-and-bonus deal is like watching someone else’s feast,” said Kim Suk-joon, 66.<\/p>\n
Another employee in the company’s contract \u200cchip manufacturing unit said he was inclined to agree to the deal even \u200bthough it disproportionately favoured the memory business.<\/p>\n
“We were all in the same position, \u200bso it feels a bit unfair that only the memory division \u200bis getting that much,” said the employee, who also asked not to be named.<\/p>\n
Jang Sung-hyun, 47, who works \u200cfor a Samsung subcontractor, said he was relieved that \u200bthe strike appeared to be off \u200bthe table, but also worried that the deal could be excessively costly for the company.<\/p>\n
“Weren’t they basically holding the public and companies hostage for the sake of their own performance bonuses?” he said.<\/p>\n
In an online union forum, some users posted supportive messages, \u200bpraising the union for withstanding strong pressure from \u200cthe company and the government to secure a deal.<\/p>\n
“Some may be satisfied, and others may be unhappy, but you truly \u200bwent through a lot. Thank you for your hard work,” read one post in Selunion, the forum.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kyu-seok \u200bShim and Hyunjoo Jin; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kyu-seok Shim and Hyunjoo Jin PYEONGTAEK, South Korea, May 21 (Reuters) – Around Samsung Electronics’ sprawling chip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[31,2464,16275,276,275,33],"class_list":["post-24906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-korea","tag-korea","tag-performance-bonuses","tag-pyeongtaek","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-sk-hynix","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906","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=24906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}