[Reporter’s Notebook] Shouting "One Samsung," Yet in the End, a 'Bonus Civil War'

"Without the dedication of Device Experience (DX), there is no Device Solutions (DS)."

On the 18th, at the entrance of the Central Labor Relations Commission in Government Complex Sejong. Just three days before the scheduled general strike, the hallway outside the negotiation room shook with unexpected shouting during the final talks between Samsung Electronics labor and management.

Union members from the DX division—responsible for producing Galaxy smartphones, TVs, and home appliances—lined up with placards at the entrance to the negotiation room. Slogans read, "One Samsung, Stop Discriminating Against DX," and "Samsung Is Not Just DS." Their expressions were as sharp as the direct messages. Tension peaked when the delegation from the Samsung Electronics Branch of the Samsung Group's supra-enterprise union appeared.

Even though the unions were supposed to present a united front to management at the negotiation room entrance, the two labor groups stood in stark confrontation. In response to the strong protest from the DX union—"Why are our demands constantly being omitted?"—the negotiation group replied, "These issues are already under discussion," as they hurried into the meeting room. Behind the departing delegation, the protest, "In the end, only DS (semiconductors) gets taken care of," lingered in the hallway.

Although gathered under the single roof of a labor union, that day, they were strangers to each other. At a critical moment when they should have been confronting management, the raw face of "labor-labor" conflict surfaced before "labor-management" strife. Discontent within the DX division runs deep and long-standing. Every time the semiconductor business boomed and DS division employees received performance bonuses equal to half their annual salary, those in DX—who quietly sustained the company with smartphones and appliances—repeatedly questioned, "Are we really Samsung Electronics employees?" There is a growing sense of deprivation, as the major rewards always seem to go to semiconductors.

This rift has grown beyond simple complaints about performance bonuses. What emerged at the Central Labor Relations Commission was less a wage negotiation and more a power struggle between divisions over "who is truly at the center of Samsung." The company is one, but interests are now divided by business unit. In the past, Samsung’s famously disciplined organizational culture earned it the nickname "Samsung of management." Regardless of whether that culture was good or bad, it is clear that now, individual interests often come before the sense of community within Samsung.

Management's concerns are deepening. The company must simultaneously respond to global supply chain restructuring, the US-China tech hegemony battle, and the AI semiconductor war. Now, it faces not only labor-management conflict but also labor-labor conflict. The union, too, is no longer representing the interests of all Samsung Electronics workers; instead, it increasingly acts as an agent for each business unit’s interests.

No matter how these negotiations end, the scars from the exposed labor-labor conflict will not fade easily. If the general strike materializes, immediate attention will focus on production disruptions or economic damage. However, the real aftershock left for Samsung Electronics is something else: "Who is the union really for now?" The tense scene in the Sejong government complex hallway left the most pressing question hanging in the air.

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