Samsung Electronics has swerved a strike that could have given Korea’s chip boom a nasty headache.
According to the Financial Times ,Samsung Electronics workers and management reached a pay deal after talks looked deadlocked.
A late shove from Labour minister Kim Young-hoon got both sides back to the table, with a deal reached at about 10.30pm local time. That was just 90 minutes before the strike deadline.
Korea’s stock market rose more than seven per cent on Thursday, which suggests traders were sweating harder than Samsung’s negotiators.
National Samsung Electronics Union chair Choi Seung-ho said members would vote before 27 May on the deal. He promised to do his “utmost to help stabilise labour-management relations at Samsung Electronics”.
The union told members to show up for work as usual on Thursday.
Sungkyunkwan University professor Kwon Seok-joon said that the strike would have had terrible effects on the memory market which is already battered by shortages.
“The most advanced memory in the world is produced in one small Korean cluster. The terrible disaster is averted,” he said.
Kwon warned that more industrial action in the next few years would damage Korea’s chip credibility, which is not ideal when everyone wants AI memory yesterday.
Samsung said: “With humility, we will work to ensure that this does not happen again and strive to build a more mature and constructive labour-management relationship,”
The dispute landed as demand for semiconductors went bananas, especially advanced high-bandwidth memory chips needed by AI data centres. Samsung and local rival SK Hynix have a near duopoly in these chips, which gives labour disputes rather more bite than usual.
Memory chip prices have surged in recent months as data centre demand and shortages squeezed hardware makers worldwide. The row centred on the 70,000-strong union’s demand for workers to get a slice of operating profits.
Last year, SK Hynix promised staff 10 per cent of operating profits each year for 10 years, creating a rather awkward pay gap between the chip groups.
Under Wednesday’s deal, Samsung semiconductor workers will get 10.5 per cent of operating profits, on top of an existing company-wide bonus scheme. The new bonus pool will be split between division-wide payouts and rewards tied to individual business units. Workers will receive an average wage rise of 6.2 per cent.
Bonuses depend on Samsung earning an operating profit of Won200tn, about €114.4bn, each year from 2026 to 2028, and Won100tn, about €57.2bn, thereafter. The conversions use X-Rates’ KRW to EUR rate from 14 May 2026.
Analysts expect Samsung to clear that bar comfortably, projecting more than Won300tn, about €171.6bn, in operating profit this year.
Not everyone is chuffed. Former Samsung worker Park Jun-young, who now writes about the industry, said some former colleagues were disappointed they did not get the 15 per cent they wanted.
“Besides, this is something that should have been done a long time ago. If you work at competitor Micron for 10 years, you earn at least Won 5bn,” Park said.
That Won5bn would be about €2.86m, which might explain some of the grumbling. The stakes were rather high for Korea. A recent Bank of Korea report predicted an 18-day strike at Samsung would have shaved 0.5 percentage points off GDP growth this year.
