Workers who make phones, televisions, and washing machines for Samsung are about to make their displeasure visible.
Their union says several thousand of them will gather near the company’s Suwon headquarters on July 16 to protest bonuses won by colleagues in the chip division, a grievance that has been taking place since the semiconductor’s pay deal was struck in May. Somewhere between 2,000, 3,000 and 3,000 people are expected to come out.
The arithmetic behind anger is easy to follow. Employees at Samsung’s Device eXperience division, part of the company that makes products that people actually touch, are slated to receive a 2026 bonus of nearly 6 million won, worth about $3,900, paid in treasury shares.
Employees of the semiconductor division stand to collect up to 600 million won. That’s a gap of about a hundred to one between the two halves of the same employer, and it seems impossible to explain.
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The chip workers achieved their success through a unique union and unique negotiations, which produced something unusual in Korean labor history.
Samsung agreed in writing to set aside a fixed portion of the semiconductor’s operating profits, about 10.5 percent, for special bonuses, only the second time a major Korean company has set aside a portion of the profits in a binding agreement.
For the people who discussed it, that was a milestone. To everyone on the other side of the building, it looked like it was written out of context.
It’s not hard to see why semiconductor workers have come up with so much. That division generates the bulk of Samsung’s profits, powered by high-bandwidth memory chips that power AI data centers, and the union squeezed its profits hard.
Chip workers were once given a bonus of $340,000 when they threatened an 18-day strike that Samsung could not pay as they were in dire shortages. The measure was real, and they used it.
Electricians and electricians have no such power, which is part of what the assembly is meant to emulate. Their division is profitable but normal, the kind of stable business that does not hold the company.
The Donghaeng union, which represents the non-chip side, has already tried the legal route, going to court in Suwon to stop a company-wide vote on the bonus arrangement. That effort didn’t stop the deal, and the demonstration is the next step.
What the protesters want is a revised quota, one that treats AI as a company-wide achievement rather than a single category award.
Samsung’s position has been that the chip bonus reflects the contribution of the chip division, a logic that is protected in the spreadsheet and difficult to sell in the factory environment.
The dispute has also attracted widespread attention, with policymakers flagging the chip bonus rate as a potential risk to inflation in a country where Samsung’s payers are moving the numbers.
The meeting itself is unlikely to change the 2026 payment, which is largely settled. Its purpose is to set goals for the next round, and to remind Samsung that staffing the two divisions is a management problem similar to budgeting.
The company said its special compensation package for chip workers exceeds industry norms, a claim that reads very differently depending on which building you work in. The profit record should have been the easy part.
Whether the show remains iconic or escalates into something disruptive will depend on what Samsung offers next.
Meanwhile, several thousand people who make the company’s most visible products are preparing to stand outside its headquarters and show that they have been there for a good year.
