Samsung employees are voting on a pay deal, and some non-chip staff are going to vote against it

South Korean workers at Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), which starts new tabs, started voting on a pay deal with huge bonuses for memory chip workers on Friday. Other workers who didn’t do as well said they plan to vote against it.

The agreement made this week at the last minute by the government stopped a planned 18-day strike. This was good for both the company and the South Korean economy.

A representative from the company’s chip business led the talks with Samsung’s management and has said he thinks the deal will be approved.

His union group, the Samsung Electronics Labor Union (SELU), said on Friday that 32,882 of its 57,290 qualified members had already voted. It wasn’t said how they decided.

For something to be approved, a simple majority of qualified unionized members must vote in favor of it and a majority of those members must also take part. If not, talks will have to start over from the beginning.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many Samsung employees who were in a union and could vote. This is because some workers are in more than one union. Another rule from SELU is that members who are behind on their union dues cannot vote.

HUGE PERKS, BUT ONLY FOR SOME

The deal mostly helps people who work in Samsung’s memory chip business, which has been making a lot of money thanks to the AI boom. This year, some of those workers will get a bonus of about $416,000.

People who work in Samsung’s foundry and logic chip units will get much smaller but still significant bonuses. People who work in other divisions, like smartphones and home products, will get even smaller bonuses.

Lee Ho-seop, head of the National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), said at a news conference on Friday, “This round of negotiations has effectively been reduced to bargaining over bonuses for the semiconductor memory division.” He also said, “a rushed outcome was produced.”

The Samsung Electronics Co Union (SECU), a different union, was also at the press meeting on Friday.

It wasn’t clear right away if its members, who include both chip workers and non-chip workers, could vote because the SECU left the negotiating team before an agreement was made because it didn’t agree with the other union blocs.

Samsung wouldn’t say anything about the NSEU and SECU’s complaints about the deal.

Electronic voting will continue until May 27 at 10 a.m.

Samsung’s stock fell 2.3% by the end of the day on Friday, after hitting a record high earlier in the day. It went up 8.5% on Thursday after the deal with the union was made.