They had failed to reach an agreement regarding worker bonuses.
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Nearly 48,000 Samsung workers in South Korea, which make up 38 percent of the company’s workforce in the country, are planning to walk out on May 21 for an 18-day strike. The company and its largest labor union had been in negotiations, and union leader Choi Seung-ho said his organization had accepted the final proposal presented by a government mediator. However, the strike is still pushing through after the parties failed to reach an agreement on one important issue: Bonuses.
The union is asking Samsung to remove the cap on workers’ bonuses, which is equivalent to 50 percent of their annual salaries. Further, it’s pushing for Samsung to allocate 15 percent of its annual operating profit to worker bonuses. Samsung is currently the world’s largest DRAM maker by revenue and has recently been posting record revenues and profits, mostly thanks to its memory business. For the first quarter of 2026, the division that includes its memory business posted KRW 53.7 trillion ($35.63 billion) in operating profit. That’s most of the company’s entire operating profit of KRW 57.2 ($37.96 billion) trillion for the quarter.
Most of the workers going on strike belong to the company’s memory division, so the walkout could disrupt the operations of the company’s biggest moneymaker. The workers stand to earn massive bonuses worth millions of dollars if Samsung agrees to the union’s demands, but the company called the union’s terms “unacceptable.” It said in a statement that the reason an agreement couldn’t be reached was because “accepting the labor union’s excessive demands would undermine the fundamental principles of company management.” The union argued that workers at Samsung rival SK Hynix received bonuses three times higher than they did last year.
Even though the union will push through with the strike, Samsung was able to convince the court to grant it an injunction. The court has required the union to make 7,087 workers report to work during the strike to keep some of its production facilities running. That said, the situation could still change before Thursday. Samsung said that it “will not give up on dialogue until the last moment” and that “there must be no strikes under any circumstances.” South Korean labor commissioner Park Soo-keun said the government is ready to mediate anytime if the parties decide to go back to the negotiating table.
