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Samsung Electronics' union has approved the bonus-pay deal that was hastily struck last week and was mediated by South Korea's labour minister. The union nod for the deal helped avert a strike at the Korean chip giant that is critical to global supplies at a time when AI stocks are booming.
Around 74% of those who voted for the deal expressed their approval, making it possible to reach a settlement between the management and workers who had been sparring for the last five months. The deal led to shares of the tech giant surging as much as 8 per cent. The dispute centred around the company's bonus payout structure and profit sharing as the tech conglomerate's semiconductor business grows on the back of widespread AI adoption. All chip workers will get a regular cash bonus of 50 per cent of their annual compensation, while it introduces a special bonus equivalent to 10.5 per cent of the operating profit of its chip division to be paid in stock, according to a Reuters report. The report further said that these payouts are contingent on the company meeting profit milestones. A minority union at the electronics giant, however, is opposed to the deal as it feels that it is heavily biased against the workers at the company's consumer electronics division. The union leaders at the company's consumer electronics and mobile division accused the management of shaping a deal that favoured the memory chip division workers. They said that it was the DX division that helped the Korean tech behemoth maintain steady operating profits even as its chip business was struggling. The DX division at Samsung is the Device Experience unit that is formed by bringing under one roof the consumer electronics and the mobile divisions. Samsung is a key pillar for the Korean economy as it forms a quarter of the East Asian economy's overall exports and is indispensable for the global semiconductor supply chain that powers the AI boom. Global semiconductor stocks are seeing a frenzy of investor interest as they continue to soar on the back of AI-driven demand. American chip giant Micron and the Korean chip manufacturer SK Hynix touched the $1 trillion valuation as investors continue piling into AI stocks. (ANI)
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