Feud deepens between Samsung's device, chip divisions over incentives

The feud between Samsung Electronics' device-making and chipmaking divisions is deepening, as employees in the smartphone and home appliance businesses are expressing anger over a nearly 100-fold compensation gap between them and employees in the chipmaking division.

Samsung Electronics Company Union (SECU), which is mostly comprised of employees in the appliance-making Device Experience (DX) division, will hold a rally under a "same company, same rights" slogan at the company’s plant in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province on Thursday to protest the compensation gap between the divisions and urge management to address the issue.

SECU became the company's second-largest labor union after a large number of DX division employees joined in protest against a wage agreement reached in May, under which only employees in the chipmaking Device Solutions (DS) division were granted performance incentives of up to 600 million won ($402,900).

As of Wednesday morning, the union had 28,569 members, accounting for roughly 55 percent of the DX division's workforce of 51,700.

A day earlier, the National Samsung E ...