The corporate incentive system, which started with the good meaning of’compensating where there is performance,’ is spreading to the issue of’labor-management conflict’. The controversy over performance pay that started at SK Hynix at the end of last month is spreading to other companies. Young employees in their 20s and 30s who are complaining about cumulative incentives calculation and criticizing ‘silley’ are making their voices in earnest. In the industry, it is pointed out that large or small amounts of money are not important, but that the problem is the’misconsiderability’ between management and employees over calculating performance pay.
SK hynix’s Icheon factory entrance door. yunhap news
According to SK on the 4th, the labor and management of SK Hynix held a discussion on the’performance pay controversy’. On the 28th of last month, when SK Hynix calculated and announced last year’s incentive pay as ‘20% of annual salary’, employees rebelled, saying, “It is too small compared to Samsung Electronics” and “the standards for calculating performance pay are unclear.” On the 1st, SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won announced his intention to “return the annual salary,” and the next day, SK Hynix CEO Lee Seok-hee released a message expressing “regret”, but the complaints of employees have not calmed down.
The council was attended by the management and full-time (production staff) unions at the Icheon and Cheongju factories under the Korean Federation of Trade Unions. The labor and management discussed △the criteria for calculating performance pay and the scope of disclosure △how to utilize the annual salary returned by Chairman Choi.
The union of’technical office workers’, which means college graduates, could not sit at the negotiating table. It was launched in September 2018 as an organization under the KCTU, but it has not been recognized as an official bargaining organization. The technical office workers’ union issued a statement that day and demanded that executives improve the’self-design system’, which allows executives to adjust the bonus rate, and’transparent the method of calculating performance pay.’
Posco who received’Tumbler’ complains that “only the head office staff gave it”
The’performance pay controversy’ started at SK Hynix is spreading to other companies. One after another, employees are pouring out’complaints’ on the company’s bulletin boards.
Samsung Electronics Seocho office building. Hankyung DB
The’discrimination controversy’ seldom subsides at Samsung Electronics’ home appliance division, whose OPI (excess profit distribution) payment rate is set at ‘37% of annual salary’. Despite the record-high operating profit estimated at 1.5 trillion won, the bonus rate is not higher than that of the wireless division in charge of smartphones (50%) or the video display division (50%) in the same consumer electronics (CE) division. will be. LG Chem and LG Energy Solution employees who had been under one roof until last year compared each other’s provisional incentives (LG Chemical 300-400%, LG Energy Solution 245%).
POSCO, which recently provided a’tumbler’ to its employees, also reported complaints among employees of affiliates that “only the head office employee received a tumbler.” SK Telecom’s labor union recently pointed out in a letter sent to CEO Park Jung-ho in the name of the chairman, “There is a serious concern about the incentives that are expected to be significantly reduced from last year.”
LG Display laments that it received’performance water’ instead of incentives
Each group’s parts and material affiliates are responding with self-confidence, saying, “We are the latter,” to the news of incentives that are much smaller than signboard companies with “electronics” in their mission. At Samsung, 12% for Samsung Display, 3% for Samsung SDI’s battery business, and 2% for Samsung Engineering.
LG Display, which supplies OLED panels for TV to LG Electronics, has no incentives again this year. The impact of recording operating losses for two consecutive years is large. Among LG Display employees, there is a saying that “I received’Performance Score’ instead of’Performance Pay’ this year.” This is a self-help expression in light of the rapid rise in water pressure in toilets as the’water conservation campaign’ disappeared under the direction of a senior executive at a company.
LG Twin Tower view. yunhap news
Many of these subsidiaries have lamented that “I had a hard time supplying parts for electronic TVs and smartphones, but in the end’pencil money’ came in.” One Samsung subsidiary made a hot topic by posting a comment to the CEO’s New Year’s address posted on the bulletin board, saying, “Please increase the treatment of employees.”
Some point out that’communication’ is not just a matter of’money’. Samsung Electro-Mechanics has an OPI payment rate of 14%, but it is known that there is no big noise. Samsung Electro-Mechanics’ CEO Kyung-Hyun Kyung and other major executives open weekly talks about OPI without hesitation and gives employees’relatively transparent information’, from inside and outside Samsung.
Reporter Hwang Jeong-soo [email protected]