Samsung Electronics union members have voted in favor of a compensation deal that will hand chip workers an average bonus of about $340,000, staving off a strike that threatened to disrupt global chip supply.
The company¡¯s largest union said the deal was signed after about 74% of its members voted in favor of the agreement. Workers accepted a wage proposal that was tentatively agreed by labor leaders last week, just 90 minutes before a planned strike at the world¡¯s largest memory chipmaker. Samsung¡¯s shares rose as much as 8% in Seoul on Wednesday.
The agreement avoids what could have been a damaging strike for Samsung and the tech industry. The South Korean giant is the world¡¯s biggest supplier of the memory chips that go into everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to the artificial intelligence data center servers that power services such as ChatGPT and Claude. Shortages in the memory chip sector have already driven prices sharply higher in recent months, and disruptions at Samsung could have exacerbated the squeeze.
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