Tens of thousands of people gathered outside Samsung Electronics' primary chip manufacturing complex, demanding that employees receive a larger portion of the substantial profits generated by the artificial intelligence boom. Local police informed media outlets that approximately 30,000 individuals participated in the rally held in Pyeongtaek, a city in southern South Korea; organizers claimed the attendance reached 39,000. Pyeongtaek hosts Samsung's extensive semiconductor industrial park. The Samsung union is advocating for 15% of the operating profits to be allocated to employees in the chip division. This allocation would amount to a total exceeding 40 trillion won ($27 billion), averaging over $400,000 per employee. Samsung had previously lagged behind its domestic competitor SK Hynix in the lucrative high-bandwidth memory (HBM) sector. While this South Korean company with the highest market capitalization is staging a comeback, it is simultaneously facing pressure regarding employee compensation and bonus demands. Along with Micron, these three giants have increasingly focused on producing HBM for Nvidia's AI accelerators in recent years. Earlier this year, Samsung took the lead in achieving commercial delivery of the next-generation HBM4. "The company talks about a crisis every single year," Samsung's largest union president, Choi Seung-ho, told the crowd at the rally. "But in these crises, it wasn't management that pulled Samsung through. It was the employees here — the union members — who made the company a world-leading semiconductor manufacturer. They manufactured the products, improved the processes, worked day and night, and increased the yield rates." The union has threatened to commence an 18-day strike starting May 21st. Workers are pointing to SK Hynix's wage increases as evidence that they deserve higher compensation — SK Hynix agreed last year to allocate 10% of its annual operating profit into a performance bonus pool.
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