Samsung's memory chip employees negotiated $340,000 bonuses this year

A tentative agreement was reached between Samsung and semiconductor employees who had threatened to strike. The proposed 18-day strike depended on Samsung’s bonus cap for semiconductor division workers. The new terms make all chip workers eligible for a regular cash bonus equal to 50% of annual salary. Samsung will also reserve 10.5% of annual operating profits for stock-based bonuses for semiconductor employees. The stock bonus pool is split with 40% distributed across the entire semiconductor division, including loss-making logic and third-party units, and the remainder allocated to the memory chip unit. A memory worker earning about $50,000 could receive total bonuses around $416,000, with payouts largely limited to stock and conditioned on profit milestones.

"Under the terms of the new deal, reports that all ​chip workers will receive 50 percent of their annual salary as a regular bonus in cash. Further to that, Samsung will set aside 10.5 percent of its annual operating profits to issue stock-based bonuses to semiconductor employees."

"Much of the negotiation hinged on how those stock bonuses would be distributed, according to The New York Times. The final deal sees 40 percent of the total pot spread across the entire semiconductor division, which includes lossmaking units working on logic chips and third-party components, with the remainder specifically for the memory chip unit, which is driving the current boom."

"The union had wanted a larger share of the bonuses to be spread equally among staff. According to Reuters, a memory chip worker on a base salary of around $50,000 could now be eligible for a total bonus of $416,000."

"Much of the bonus will also be limited to stock, while SK Hynix bonuses can be issued in shares or cash, and Samsung has also made the bonus payments conditional on the company hitting profit milestones. Samsung, which recently hit a $1 trillion valuation, is South Korea's largest company, and accounts for around a quarter of the country's exports."

Read at The Verge