SEOUL, May 22 (Reuters) – Members of Samsung Electronics’ South Korean union will begin voting on Friday on a tentative pay deal reached with the company, with voting due to run into next week, according to a union notice on its website.
The vote, involving about 89,000 members of two Samsung unions based on Wednesday’s count, is being conducted electronically from 2:12 p.m. (0512 GMT) on Friday after a brief delay due to a server overload. Voting is due to run until 10 a.m. on May 27, the union said.
Union leaders reached a last-minute deal on Wednesday that averted a threatened 18-day strike that risked disrupting global semiconductor supply.
The agreement includes a plan for Samsung to set aside about 10.5% of its chip division’s operating profit for special bonuses for the division covering the memory and logic businesses, with some members set to receive about $416,000.
Approval requires a majority of all members to participate and a majority of those voting to support the deal, otherwise negotiations must restart from scratch.
A union leader has said he expected the agreement to be ratified.
(Reporting by Kyu-seok ShimEditing by Ed Davies)
