Reported records of Samsung Electronics’ March wage talks cite a bonus figure of 607% of annual salary for memory employees, linked to a proposal to exceed rival SK hynix’s payouts. Bonuses for foundry and System LSI employees were put at 50% to 100% in those accounts.
These are reported negotiating terms, rather than confirmed payments. Union representatives argued in the reported discussions that the gap could encourage logic chip staff to move to Samsung’s memory business or other companies. All three businesses belong to Samsung’s Device Solutions division.
Competing bonus proposals
Samsung has also proposed a conditional special reward for memory employees, with payment rates matching or exceeding competitors if revenue and operating profit reach domestic industry-leading levels. The company said comparable future performance would also qualify for special rewards.
The union is seeking a bonus pool equal to 15% of annual operating profit and a formal agreement permanently removing the bonus cap, reported as 50% of annual salary. These remain negotiating demands.
Union chairman Choi Seung-ho used a hypothetical comparison in the reported negotiation records: 500 million won for a memory employee against 80 million won for a foundry employee. He questioned whether foundry staff would remain motivated to stay under such an arrangement. The example does not establish actual individual payments.
Different earnings across the chip businesses
Samsung’s semiconductor division combines memory production, contract chip manufacturing through its foundry business and logic chip design through System LSI.
In its first-quarter 2026 results, released April 30, Samsung said AI-related memory demand and higher selling prices helped its memory business set quarterly revenue and operating profit records, despite limited supply availability. The company also said it had begun selling HBM4 memory products for Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform.
Samsung said System LSI earnings improved with increased system-on-chip sales, while foundry earnings declined because of seasonal weakness.
Samsung negotiator Kim Hyung-ro argued in the reported transcripts that logic chip operations had lost trillions of won and that investment in those businesses was funded by memory earnings.
Retention concerns and planned strike
On April 17, the union said more than 200 employees had moved to SK hynix over the preceding four months, attributing the departures to Samsung’s compensation structure.
SK hynix said in September 2025 that it had agreed with its union to allocate 10% of annual operating profit to employee bonuses and remove its profit-sharing bonus cap. The arrangement was agreed for 10 years, with 80% of each employee’s calculated bonus paid in the current year and the remainder deferred in two equal annual installments.
Samsung’s union had announced an 18-day strike from May 21 to June 7 if the compensation dispute remained unresolved.
The union said workers missed the overnight shift from 10 p.m. on April 23 to 6 a.m. on April 24 after attending a rally in Pyeongtaek. It said foundry output at Samsung’s South Korean facilities fell 58% during that shift and memory output declined 18%. Those figures remain the union’s account of the affected shift, rather than independently confirmed production data.
