‘Performance Bonus Controversy’ SKT to Pay 8 Million KRW Settlement to All Employees for Wage Negotiation

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] SK Telecom, which recently faced controversy over performance bonuses, will pay a wage negotiation settlement amount of 8 million KRW to all employees.

According to the telecommunications industry on the 8th, the SK Telecom labor-management wage negotiation task force has tentatively agreed to pay 8 million KRW to all employees as a wage negotiation settlement amount, and the payment will be finalized after a union member vote on the 11th.

The wage negotiation settlement amount is given as compensation because employees' dissatisfaction grew due to performance bonuses being lower than expected. It also appears to reflect the recent atmosphere in the IT industry where fierce competition for talent recruitment is occurring due to a domino effect of annual salary increases.

Previously, performance bonuses were excluded from the labor-management negotiation table on the grounds that they were not subject to wage and collective bargaining, but due to recent controversies, this time the wage negotiation and performance bonus system were discussed together.

Earlier, the SK Telecom labor union officially raised the issue, stating that despite last year's sales of 18.6 trillion KRW and operating profit of 1.3 trillion KRW, which represent growth of 5.0% and 21.8% respectively compared to the previous year, last year's performance bonuses decreased by about 20% compared to the previous year.

The SK Telecom labor and management proposed a system improvement plan so that employees can predict the criteria for the performance bonuses that had been problematic. The main point is to replace the current EVA (Economic Value Added) performance bonus criteria indicator with alternative indicators such as operating profit.

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