Samsung chip workers reject $340,000 one-time bonus, demand annual payouts like SK hynix's $900,000 — workers want share of AI windfall, impending 18-day strike could cost Samsung up to $11.7 billion

Yes. Hynix workers got paid 477K USD in bonuses this year. 900K next year. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/sk-hynix-employees-could-receive-447000-bonuses-this-year

> Is every single worker getting an annual bonus of 900k$ ??? That is what they are pushing for yes. Which for upto 40,000 employees would cost the company about 36 billion dollars. Considering how much profit the company had made this quarter, it's likely actually warranted. Yes, that's about equal to the companies profits, but you have to remember there's still 3:4 of the year to go, and that 900k is intended as either a one-off or annual bonus. Samsung sure as shit wont be hurting by paying it to them. The company *will* however lose a lot of money if they do not, and production grinds to a halt.

unbelievable in the usa right?

Their bonus schedule is based on profit share percentage. It's pretty solid. When they company does well, bonuses are good. They don't need to pay as well because they bonus is part of the company contract. Recruiters have been bleeding Samsung for years with this incentive structure. Its pretty brilliant actually. 

Problem with Samsung is that they make everything 'electronics', not just memory chips like SK Hynix does. Workers in the smartphone, foundry and system IC, software, and home appliance divisions are demanding the same bonus as the memory chip workers where the latter division is really earning Samsung the record-breaking profits. Speaking in the perspective of administration, you can understand why they'd be hesitant about paying the same 1 million bonus to the home appliances division, for example, when their performance is lackluster and are being pushed out by Chinese competition. The performances of each division is really case-by-case. Additionally, IF Samsung followed through with the union's demands, the bonuses would exceed the company's 2026 R&D spending. This comes when Samsung actually lost to Hynix's HBM3E market share in 2025. Samsung can withstand an 18-day strike, but the same can't be said for many of Samsung's small enterprise suppliers and partners. That said, Samsung has overtaken Hynix with HBM4 and are widening the gap, so this issue is very much more complicated than just sharing record breaking profits. The left-leaning Korean government is saying a 1 million payout for every worker is excessive, since a strike could partially erase the almost 40% year-on-year export boom that Korea's been enjoying, thanks to Hynix and Samsung. But they're also iffy about this cause they want to promote engineering disciplines over medicine and dentistry, which are currently king in Korea, and there's no better way to do this than to use Samsung as an example.

is the price increase also collusion like the last 10 memory price hikes?

You’re confusing revenue and profit. Profits vary by huge multiples all the time for many companies. For example Peloton had a 110x increase in Operating Profit between 2025 Q1 and 2025 Q2.

Im with the workers here... But putting everything else aside and all other reasons aside, there is 1 valid fear i can see companies having in a situation like this.. why would you stay after a 1 or 2 or 3 years? You're essentially giving huge payouts to employees that guarantee a mass workforce exodus. Why would you continue working there with a couple million in the bank that you can build and live of?

They still won't... Because it sets a precedent. Corporates hate that

The problem is they have 77,000 employees. At least there is some semblance of sharing the profite in Korean culture. Can you imagine Amazon providing one time payouts of profits ro factory workers, they dont even let them use bathrooms

Probably not. How many of those employees would quit after getting a $900k bonus? And how many realistically could afford to quit without the bonus? So Samsung can either pay everyone $900k and get a massive workforce disruption. Or pay everyone $0 and maybe get a workforce disruption. I think I can see which way this is going.

Stocks aren't going to buy themselves back.

freezing pay helps to hit those record profits 😂

As the saying goes, "when there's a gold rush, sell shovels" Doesn't matter if AI is profitable or not. As long as the AI bubble keeps expanding companies will continue to buy components from Samsung for AI data centres.

AI isn't. Samsung are just supplying semiconductors for hardware though so it's all hard cash. It's not the weird NVIDIA/openai shell game where NVIDIA invests in openai and openai promises to buy x worth of hardware over y years.

For Samsung and SK Hynix it certainly is

Yes, Samsung's Q1 operating profit was 39 Billion USD. Hynix was 25.4 Billion USD. According to Goldman Sachs, Samsung's operating profit in 2028 alone is expected to be greater than the profits made by Japan's top 100 companies combined

It is for the companies building the components

Yes. Look at Google, anthropic

OpenAI needs to make $180-200 BILLiOn a year to be profitable, by 2030. It's not impossible but the age of free tokens and no ads in the output will come to end faster than anyone expects.

Shows the power of the workers, and yet we allow ourselves to be treated like shit by our corporate overlords. We should learn from these people

This company responsible for like half of the economics of South Korea.

Yeah, AI researchers at Microsft and Amazon are famously poor.

uhh in both senior ICs make well into mid 6 figures in just RSUs and very senior ICs at Amazon can reach 7 figures if just RSUs, completely ignoring base pay as well and of course those RSUs benefit from stock performance

You know nothing about FAANG comp then. The SDEs involved in actual AI-related fields are comped very well.

I'm pretty sure the "poor" don't reject $340,000 one time payments.

“Curse those peasants! I need to take the jet to Greece for the weekend to calm down”.

Average pay across all of Samsung Electronics is [$107K](https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10691935). The chips group is likely significantly higher.

It is because SK Hynix employees in the past got a deal where their bonuses are a % of the operating profit. Now that RAM prices have absolutely skyrocketed, that % deal is paying out huge bonuses. If the price collapses again, the bonuses will as well.

The missing context here: Samsung in Korea operates where they under pay salary by about 50% compared to different countries or what is considered normal. In typical conditions the other 50% is an annual profit sharing bonus. When markets are down and company profit is down then workers make less if their division was less profitable. None of the "normal" market variability has made outlier events like we see today from global trade wars tanking markets and AI causing massive gold rushes in others. The workers protesting here have gotten 0 profit sharing bonus for more than 1 year in a row now. So that means with the economy tanking, inflation spiking, they have had their income halved, and now they're watching one division rake in insane bonuses due to the AI boom, and they're saying enough is enough. Back compensation for missing half their pay check for more than a year, and equalizing the corporate profit share across divisions is why they say this makes sense. The argument is that division based profit share bonus model makes sense in normal conditions, but these are not normal conditions.

Well the EU is probably one of the lowest paid westernized places. I wouldnt compare that salary to anything. Tech workers make literally 1/4th the pay there. I don’t see how any software engineers live there tbh the pay is astoundingly low

No, but you see the CEO caused the profits to go up by 50%, not unprecedented demand and overtime from the workers. That's why they deserve 1000x the pay and the workers get nothing :)

> These guys are fighting harder for a raise What are you talking about? It's just a union negotiating union stuff. This isn't that ground breaking lol

Every year? What companies were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per employee in bonuses before the AI boom in Korea?

As a Korean I'm glad to read this comment. People judge korea just by seeing movie like Parasite or Squid game. The fact, that these movies continue to be released shows that both the public and the political sphere recognize the importance of solving this issue. In reality, if you live in Korea, you’ll find it’s not so much a "capitalist dystopia" but actually has surprisingly strong socialist tendencies. However, the intense culture of competition, high suicide rate, low birth rate, and the obsession with physical appearance—those are all accurate observations.