"We will see if the management and union come to a settlement by around 10 p.m., and it will be decided whether an agreement is reached or whether a mediation is necessary,” Park Soo-keun, chairman of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC), told reporters during the second round of post-mediation talks.
Park said that if management accepts a compromise proposal after internal review, the union must still put the deal to a membership vote.
“If the proposal is rejected in the vote, the union would proceed with a strike,” he said.
Park also signaled that the commission itself would step in with a formal mediation proposal should management refuse to accept a negotiated compromise.
Under South Korea’s post-mediation process, the NLRC may present a compromise proposal combining elements from both sides if direct negotiations fail. But if either labor or management rejects the proposal, talks collapse — a scenario that could sharply raise the likelihood of a strike.
Samsung Electronics Co. and its largest labor union resumed government-led wage mediation Tuesday, with the looming possibility of reaching a last-minute deal to avert an 18-day strike scheduled to begin Thursday.
The renewed negotiations came days after the first round of mediation ended without an agreement, as the two sides remained divided over performance-based bonuses tied to booming artificial intelligence-related semiconductor earnings.
“Both labor and management are making concessions,” Park said earlier in the day, adding that one or two key issues remained unresolved.
Labor and management remain sharply split over how to structure bonuses during the ongoing global memory chip supercycle.
Samsung has proposed maintaining the current excess profit incentive system while allowing the bonus pool to be calculated based on 10 percent of operating profit. The company also proposed introducing a separate special compensation framework to create a more flexible incentive structure.
The union, meanwhile, is demanding fixed performance bonuses equivalent to 15 percent of the semiconductor division’s operating profit and the removal of payout caps.
The two sides have reportedly narrowed differences on eliminating the current bonus ceiling set at 50 percent of annual salary, according to industry sources. However, disagreements remain over whether bonuses should also be distributed to loss-making business units and whether any revised framework should be formally institutionalized.
The union has reportedly proposed allocating 70 percent of the semiconductor bonus pool across the entire division, while distributing the remaining 30 percent based on individual business unit performance.
Management, however, argues that such a structure could reward loss-making divisions and weaken the company’s performance-based compensation principles.
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