Samsung Electronics averted a potential strike by reaching a pay agreement with its workforce. But the deal has exposed fresh internal divisions, with employees pointing to uneven rewards tied to the company's push into artificial intelligence.
How the deal came together
Negotiators for Samsung and its workers finalized the pay agreement in recent days, heading off what would have been the first strike at the South Korean tech giant in years. The company did not disclose the full terms, but people familiar with the talks said the package included base salary increases and performance bonuses. The deal was enough to keep assembly lines running and avoid disruptions to production of memory chips and smartphones—two core businesses that have been under pressure from a global slowdown.
Workers had been threatening to walk out over demands for higher pay and a bigger share of profits. Samsung has reported record earnings in some divisions, largely driven by its growing AI chip business. That concentration of profits appears to have fueled the wage dispute.
The AI reward gap
According to multiple accounts from inside the company, the pay deal did little to bridge a growing gap between employees working on AI-related projects and those in more traditional roles. Workers in areas such as memory chip fabrication and consumer electronics say the bonuses and raises tilted heavily toward teams involved in high-performance computing and data center hardware—segments that have seen explosive demand from AI model trainers.
One employee described the mood as “tense.” The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters, said: “Those of us on the older product lines feel like we're being left behind. The AI teams get the big bonuses, and the rest of us get scraps.” The comment was not verified by the company.
Samsung has invested heavily in AI infrastructure, including its HBM3 memory used in Nvidia's chips. That bet has paid off with surging sales, but the company has not publicly addressed how it distributes the resulting profits across its workforce.
What comes next
The pay deal runs for one year, according to the terms reviewed by GFdaily. Samsung has not announced any changes to its compensation structure for non-AI units. Workers say they plan to raise the issue again during the next round of negotiations, which are expected to begin in early 2025. For now, the strike is off. But the question of how Samsung shares the wealth from its AI boom—and whether it can keep the peace internally—remains open.
