Global Market: SK Hynix workers reject pay deal amid bonus dispute

South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix’s union members narrowly rejected a tentative wage agreement on Tuesday, with the outcome decided by just 25 votes, according to Reuters.

Of the 15,045 workers who cast ballots, 50.08% voted against the agreement, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The agreement, reached last week, proposed a 6.3% wage increase and changes to the company’s profit-sharing bonus scheme. Under the proposed system, 40% of bonuses would be paid in cash and the remaining 60% in SK Hynix shares.


SK Hynix was not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters.

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The world’s second-largest memory chipmaker has benefited from surging demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips used in artificial intelligence applications, boosting its profits.

Last year, SK Hynix and its workers agreed to allocate 10% of annual operating profit toward profit-sharing bonuses under a system that would remain in place for 10 years. Under that arrangement, 80% of the bonus is paid in cash in the year it is awarded, while the remaining 20% is deferred over two years.

However, the proposal to shift more than half of this year’s bonuses into company shares faced resistance from some workers concerned about stock-price volatility. SK Hynix shares hit a record high in June amid optimism over the AI boom but subsequently declined as investors questioned whether heavy spending on AI-related capacity would generate sufficient returns.

The labour dispute comes as South Korea’s semiconductor industry continues to grapple with questions over compensation amid strong demand and rapidly changing market conditions.

In May, Samsung Electronics and its unionised workers reached an agreement on performance-related pay, avoiding a major strike that had threatened to disrupt chip supplies. Under that deal, Samsung agreed to allocate 10.5% of its annual semiconductor operating profit to special bonuses for chip workers, with the bonuses paid in company stock and restrictions placed on the immediate sale of most of the shares.

SK Hynix shares were down 4.9% as of 0036 GMT on Tuesday, compared with a 2.2% decline in the benchmark KOSPI, according to Reuters.