Photo courtesy of Yonhap News

 

[Alpha Biz= Paul Lee] Samsung Electronics’ labor unions have declared a breakdown in wage negotiations, marking the first such deadlock involving a single union representing a majority of employees since the company’s founding.

A joint bargaining group comprising the company’s supra-enterprise union, the National Samsung Electronics Labor Union, and Samsung Electronics Union Donghaeng said on Wednesday that negotiations for 2026 wages had officially collapsed and that the unions would apply for mediation with the National Labor Relations Commission.

The unions plan to file a mediation request on Thursday and said they would seek the right to strike if mediation fails to produce acceptable results.

The main point of contention centers on the calculation of Over-Performance Incentives (OPI). The unions have demanded that the OPI threshold be fixed for three years and that performance exceeding 50% of the OPI benchmark be compensated at levels comparable to or above those of competitors. They have also called for excess performance gains to be shared evenly between business divisions and business units.

Management, meanwhile, has reportedly proposed disclosing the annual operating profit threshold for OPI at the beginning of the year and breaking down the 0–50% OPI range into 10% increments, with corresponding profit guidance. The company is also said to have offered additional incentives—paid entirely in shares—if the Device Solutions (DS) division ranks first domestically in both revenue and operating profit this year, with payouts linked to operating profit per 1 trillion won.

 

 

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