Union Membership Still below 6% of Workforce
The number of members of the National Samsung Electronics Union under the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, the largest of the four unions in Samsung Electronics, topped 6,000 last week. The number increased by more than 50 percent from 4,000 or so this year. The ratio of the number to the total employee count is 5.29 percent.
Last month, employee representatives and the management of Samsung Electronics agreed on a pay increase of 9 percent for 2022. Individual contracts based on the agreement are scheduled to be signed on May 12. According to the company’s current rules, wages are to be fixed each year by the internally elected representatives and the management until the company has a union consisting of more than half of its employees.
The National Samsung Electronics Union is claiming that the agreement is illegal. “The union members are increasingly colluding with politicians to make more and more excessive demands and become increasingly militant,” said an industry insider, adding, “This is because IT companies are increasing employee salaries one after another and this is seriously affecting labor-management relations in Samsung Electronics.”
“The union members’ claims are groundless in that Samsung Electronics is a manufacturer and their targets of comparison are IT service providers such as Naver and Kakao,” he went on to say, continuing, “In the manufacturing sector, salaries from Samsung Electronics are the highest without a doubt and, in addition, the average annual salary of TSMC employees is approximately 70 million won whereas that of Samsung Electronics employees amounts to 160 million won.”
Under the circumstances, concerns of individual shareholders investing in Samsung Electronics are increasing. These days, the stock price of the company is showing no signs of recovering amid raw material procurement-related difficulties, global supply chain issues, the war in Ukraine, and many more. The small but militant union is something totally unexpected on the shareholders’ part. Besides, some opposition lawmakers, including Lee Su-jin (Democratic Party of Korea) and Kang Eun-mi (Justice Party), are siding with the union, which means the wag-the-dog situation is likely to increase in scale.