SK Hynix Faces Concerns Over Talent Drain Amid Bonus Controversy... Union Prepares Class Action Lawsuit

[Asia Economy Reporter Su-yeon Woo] SK Hynix, which led to SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won's declaration to forgo his salary last year amid a performance bonus controversy, has recently been engulfed in internal strife as a dispute over employment rules has emerged. The SK Hynix office workers' union has responded by preparing a class-action lawsuit regarding changes to the employment rules.

On the 3rd, it was confirmed that the SK Hynix Technical Office Workers' Union is preparing a class-action lawsuit related to changes in employment rules. SK Hynix, which maintains a multiple union system, operates with a production workers' union affiliated with the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) and a technical office workers' union under the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). Following SK Hynix's announcement of performance bonuses, the technical office workers' union saw its membership increase by more than 100 members within five days, indicating a rise in union participation. The union leadership has even decided on a temporary reduction in union dues to concentrate their efforts.

The technical office workers' union argues that the 'Self Design' employment rule, introduced and changed by management in 2018, violated the law because it was implemented without union consent. They claim that this employment rule provided an excuse for executives to arbitrarily reduce employees' performance bonuses, causing disadvantages to the employees.

On the other hand, management explained that the 'Self Design' rule was introduced in 2018 to change the personnel evaluation criteria from relative to absolute evaluation, aiming to increase autonomy in distributing performance bonuses within each team. Under current labor law, changes to employment rules that disadvantage workers require the consent of the majority of the union. Ultimately, if this issue leads to legal battles, the key point will be whether the 'Self Design' employment rule was intended to disadvantage the union or not.

As the performance bonus controversy continues, SK Hynix is now facing a situation where it must consider the outflow of key personnel. Coincidentally, large-scale experienced hires announcements from competitors such as Samsung Electronics and Micron were made simultaneously with the spread of the SK Hynix performance bonus controversy.

Accordingly, it is expected that the competition for talent will intensify in the semiconductor industry, where securing key personnel is the top priority. Recently, SK Group, which has been gradually increasing irregular hiring, plans to abolish regular recruitment from next year and switch all hiring to irregular recruitment, further emphasizing the importance of securing talent through experienced hires.

As the performance bonus controversy persists, SK Hynix management proposed to the production workers' union on the 4th to discuss last year's excess profit sharing (PS) at the Central Labor-Management Council. Industry attention is focused on what kind of consensus labor and management will reach at this meeting.

Earlier, on the 28th of last month, Hynix announced that it would pay 400% of an amount equivalent to one-twentieth of an individual's salary as this year's PS. Despite SK Hynix's operating profit last year increasing by more than 80% compared to the previous year, employees strongly opposed receiving performance bonuses at the same level as in 2019.

In response, Chairman Chey declared that he would distribute his SK Hynix salary from last year to employees, and SK Hynix President Lee Seok-hee conveyed a message to increase communication regarding performance bonuses, but internal employee opposition has not easily subsided.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.