A South Korean court on Tuesday dismissed an attempt by Samsung Electronics' consumer electronics workers to block ratification of the company's AI-driven bonus deal, according to the Korea Herald, all but guaranteeing approval of a package that will pay memory chip employees roughly $400,000 each this year while their colleagues in smartphones and home appliances receive closer to just $4,000.
The Suwon District Court rejected the injunction filed by five employees from Samsung’s Device eXperience (DX) division, who had argued it was unfairly excluded from the vote. Over 90% of eligible members of the larger Samsung Electronics Labor Union (SELU), which led negotiations, had already cast ballots by Tuesday morning.
The vote closes Wednesday and is widely expected to pass, since an estimated 80% to 90% of the SELU's 57,290 voting members work in Samsung's semiconductor division, the primary beneficiary of the deal.
The government-mediated agreement, struck last week to avert an 18-day general strike by 48,000 workers, allocates 10.5% of Samsung's semiconductor division operating profit as stock-based bonuses, plus an additional 1.5% in cash. The program runs for 10 years, contingent on the division hitting aggressive annual operating profit targets of 200 trillion won ($132 billion) from 2026 to 2028 and 100 trillion won from 2029 to 2035.
Based on Bloomberg's projections of Samsung's 2026 operating profit at approximately 330 trillion won (~$218 billion), the total bonus pool for the company's 78,000 semiconductor employees would reach roughly 40 trillion won ($26.6 billion). Individual payouts vary sharply by unit: memory division workers stand to receive around 600 million won (~$400,000), while those in Samsung's struggling foundry and logic chip design operations would get substantially less but still significant sums.
DX division employees, like those behind the legal filing, by contrast, would receive approximately 6 million won (~$4,000) under the existing bonus structure, which the new deal doesn’t change.
While the court's ruling removed the most immediate legal obstacle, opposition to the deal extends well beyond the SECU. The National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), which has roughly 20,000 members across both chip and non-chip divisions, said it’s also voting against the deal, and NSEU official Lee Ho-seok told Reuters that some foundry workers within Samsung's chip division are also frustrated with the terms.
A group of individual shareholders has separately threatened to sue, arguing that the profit-linked bonus scheme amounts to a distribution of company funds that requires a shareholder vote under South Korean commercial law. The Korea Shareholder Action Headquarters staged a rally last week near the Seoul residence of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, warning it would use all available legal avenues to block disbursement.
The internal rift has already had operational consequences, with resentment over the bonus disparity having spread to Samsung’s chip packaging divisions. It’s understood that intentional production slowdowns are disrupting HBM delivery schedules, prompting CEO Jun Young-hyun to urge employees in an internal memo to move past the conflict.
