“A story of another world that has nothing to do with me”
While the controversy over performance pay from SK Hynix is spreading to the entire business community, including Samsung Electronics and LG affiliates, on the other hand, they are complaining about relative deprivation amid economic difficulties caused by the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19). Workers at small and medium-sized workplaces who are unable to receive full salary, let alone bonuses, and self-employed people with limited livelihoods are unable to conceal their feelings of collapse in the controversy over performance pay in conglomerates, saying that it is their own league.
◆Sk Hynix’s controversy over performance pay
The controversy began when SK Hynix announced at the end of last month that it would pay up to 20% of its annual salary as an incentive, and employees complained. Employees said that the incentive pay was insignificant compared to the performance, and urged “disclose the calculation method.” Last year, SK Hynix’s operating profit recorded 5 trillion won, an 84% increase from the same period last year, driven by the booming semiconductor industry.
SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won personally announced that he would return the entire amount of 3 billion won in annual salary received from SK Hynix and distribute it to employees. SK Hynix President Lee Seok-hee also apologized, but his complaint did not fade.
There was even a raging voice saying, “I want to move to Samsung Electronics, a competitor,” but complaints about incentives were also raised inside Samsung Electronics.
Samsung Electronics differentially pays excess performance incentives (OPI, former PS) for each business division, and the incentives for the semiconductor division (DS division) were calculated as 47% of annual salary. The problem is that the semiconductor division led half of the company’s earnings, which was less than 50% of the smartphone (IM) division or the video display (VD) division. Last year, Samsung Electronics posted operating profits of 18.81 trillion won, 3.5 trillion won, and 11.47 trillion won in DS, consumer electronics (CE), and IM sectors, respectively.
This controversy continues to spread to major conglomerates such as SK Telecom and LG Energy Solutions, which were spun off by LG Chem.
During the labor-management negotiation process, the union level, mainly led by the production staff of large companies, has demanded an increase in salary from the management. It was not common for white-collar workers to conflict with the management over wage issues.
An official in the business community said, “Most of the office workers have low union membership rates, and due to the vertical organizational atmosphere, they seldom made voices related to annual salary.” However, information sharing has become more active and the concept of’lifetime work’ has weakened as in the past. “I don’t know if I can go out, so it seems that it reflects the situation that I want to receive compensation for my performance right away.” Another business official analyzed that “the controversy started at SK is that the issue grew as Chairman Tae-won Choi became chairman of the Daehan Sangsang.” He said, “Chairman Choi is a’business man’ and has become representative, so I think he wants to be an example. The voices of workers who demand fairness and transparency will grow louder in the future.”
◆More office workers feel relative deprivation of their own league
However, most of the general office workers responded to the labor-management conflict over bonuses as “a different world story”.
On the 6th, an experimental researcher, Shinmo (34), sighed on the 6th, saying, “Our company knows that sales increased by 30% last year, but the holiday rice cake price, let alone bonuses, has decreased by 50% compared to the previous year.”
Mr. Park, 36, who works for a startup, said, “You should have received an incentive to know,” and said, “It sounds like a story from another country, so there is no inspiration.” Mr. Lee, 41, who works at a small and medium-sized business, said, “It seems great that employees of large corporations receive my annual salary as an incentive. Banks are also receiving incentives of tens of millions of won, but since Samsung has made hundreds of billions of billions, it seems possible.”
An anonymous office worker in Blind, an online community for office workers, said, “It is bitter to hear that the so-called well-going office workers receive tens of millions of won in incentives and are not satisfied with the economic hardship of the self-employed as well as the entire citizen with Corona 19.” did. One netizen lamented, “There are people who can’t get a proper salary, let alone an incentive pay,” and lamented, “I want to get a job because I don’t have to earn an incentive pay every time I read such an article.”
Reporter Dahun Yang [email protected]
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