What are Samsung union workers demanding and how might a strike play out?

SEOUL — South Korean memory chip maker Samsung Electronics is facing its worst-ever strike, with nearly 48,000 workers threatening to walk off production lines on Thursday for 18 days over a dispute about bonus payouts. Here are key things to know: What does Samsung's union want? Samsung's union has asked the company to abolish a cap that limits bonuses to 50 percent of annual salaries and to allocate 15 percent of annual operating profit to a bonus pool that would be distributed to workers. It also wants Samsung to make the changes binding beyond this year. Samsung made a very different offer. Transcripts of negotiations between the union and Samsung showed that in March, Samsung cited estimates that some staff at smaller rival SK Hynix could receive bonuses equivalent to 607 percent of their annual salary and proposed that its memory chip workers would gain a bonus exceeding levels that SK Hynix workers receive. Samsung also proposed bonuses of 50 percent to 100 percent for staff in its logic chip businesses. These bonuses, however, would be a one-off payment for this year. In principleWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times