Samsung's breakaway union wants 1,000 treasury shares a head, three months after signing

Samsung Electronics' Donghaeng union will rally near the company's Seocho headquarters in Seoul on the 21st, demanding 1,000 treasury shares for every worker in the finished-products (DX) division ^[2][3]. It is doing so less than three months after a wage agreement that Employment and Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon brokered personally, a day before a planned general strike, and which a court declined to suspend in June ^[1][11][14].

The arithmetic is the story. Samsung had 49,345 DX employees on the payroll as of last month, so 1,000 shares each means 49.345 million shares, worth more than 12 trillion won at a share price of about 250,000 won ^[8]. On those inputs the bill is roughly 12.34 trillion won, or about 250 million won per employee ^[2][1]. Sedaily frames the ask as $8.6 billion in additional shares ^[9].

Note what the demand is denominated in. It is not a cash bonus or a bigger base increase; it is stock the company already holds ^[2]. Treasury stock is usually discussed as an instrument of investor return, cancelled or sold at the board's discretion. Here it is being repriced as a bargaining item, and at a size that would make it the largest single distribution decision of the year at the company. The union's stated basis is relative, not absolute: it argues the gap in performance-based rewards between the semiconductor DS division and the DX division widened too far under the May deal, deepening a sense of deprivation among DX staff ^[7].

The claim also runs past the claimant. Donghaeng has about 30,000 members ^[4], while the demand covers 49,345 DX employees, roughly 19,000 more people than the union has members ^[4]. And it is not the representative bargaining union, which is the crux of the legality dispute now that a wage agreement is settled; reversing a signed deal could breach the duty of industrial peace ^[16].

That deal is not weakly held. Samsung and the joint bargaining group signed the 2026 Wage Agreement on May 27 after a tentative accord late on May 20, ratified on 95.5% turnout with 73.7% in favour ^[11], which works out to about 70% of eligible members voting yes ^[3]. Donghaeng broke away from the bargaining group, objected to the outcome and litigated ^[13]. In June the Suwon District Court dismissed the tentative-agreement portion of its injunction and rejected the request to suspend the agreement's effect, finding no grounds at the injunction stage to void a deal signed by the union that represented bargaining ^[14]. The agreement runs to February 28 next year ^[15].

The mechanics of the 21st are where the risk sits. The rally is set for 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., inside normal business hours, with members planning to use company paid-leave programmes such as "D-day" to attend ^[3][6], and buses arranged from the Gwangju and Gumi worksites ^[4]. It is the first large-scale off-site collective action during working hours since May ^[5]. If it goes beyond a rally into a work stoppage led independently by Donghaeng, the question becomes whether the party staging the action has standing to stage it ^[17].

Watch whether Samsung treats the leave as valid cover, and whether Seoul intervenes again: the May settlement was driven by the judgement that a labour clash must not disrupt semiconductor output ^[12]. Also watch some in the industry openly question the propriety of a 12 trillion won ask after signing ^[10] - that is the argument that decides whether this is a negotiation or an outlier.