[단독]Samsung Electronics agreed to raise wages by 7.5%… College graduate initial wage 48 million won

Samsung Electronics’ labor and management have agreed to increase the average annual salary of employees by 4.5% (based on basic salary) in this year’s wage negotiations. The starting salary for college graduates has risen from 44.5 million won last year to 48 million won this year.

On the 26th, Samsung Electronics announced a settlement agreement for wage negotiations this year through an in-house bulletin board. The average increase rate of basic salary was 4.5% compared to the previous year, and the performance increase rate, which is a special increase according to last year’s high performance, was 3% on average. The overall increase was 7.5%. Excessive bonus incentives (OPI, former PS), target achievement incentives (TAI), and special incentives, which are included in the bonuses, are separate from the agreed annual salary increase.

The wage increase rate is differentially paid based on the high performance of each employee’s position (career level, CL). CL1 (high school graduates) and CL2 (college graduates) increased their basic salary by 11%. ‘Benefor You’, a welfare point that can be used at Samsung Electronics’ exclusive malls, has increased from 700,000 points to 1 million points.

Samsung Electronics usually concluded the agreement between February and mid-March, and has been paying adjusted salaries since March, but this time, it took a long time to negotiate wage adjustment. The management has insisted that the basic wage increase rate this year is around 3%, and the labor side has insisted on 6.36%. An average of 4.5% base salary increase is a compromise between the two proposals.

Even with the agreed annual salary increase, voices of dissatisfaction that “the increase rate is too low” come out inside Samsung Electronics. In fact, LG Electronics recently agreed to raise wages by 9%, and employee salaries have risen significantly across the information technology (IT) industry, including game companies. For example, at Naver, the average annual salary of an employee with 5.78 years of service is 12.48 million won, and at Samsung Electronics, an employee with 12.4 years receives 127 million won.

Recently, a post was posted on Blind, an anonymous community for office workers, saying, “How will morale increase if the representative raises the salary by 2.4 times and the employee’s wage increase rate is so low?”
Reporter Park Hyung-soo [email protected]