Salaries of LG Electronics Employees Raised Substantially

LG Electronics has raised its employees’ annual salaries by 9 percent.

LG Electronics announced on March 18 that its employees’ annual salaries would be raised by 9 percent this year, the highest rate of increase since 2011. The rate of increase was 3.8 percent in 2020 and close to it in 2018 and 2019.

The company’s decision is because more and more companies in the IT sector are rapidly increasing their salaries. In addition, the company raised the base pay instead of incentives with its employees still complaining about their incentives announced last month. The third union in the company, led by office workers, was recently established and this has to do with the determination, too.

The complaints turned into those about wages and benefits as a whole. More and more workers expressed discontent with their wages lower than those of many others and the union of manufacturing workers demanded a pay increase of 11.2 percent before the initiation of this year’s wage talks.

The other LG Group subsidiaries are following suit. LG Chem recently raised initial salaries to a large extent. Specifically, each new employee’s first annual salary has been raised from 43 million won to 46 million won and those of seniors and managers have been raised by three million won and four million won, respectively.

In LG Display, engineers’ wages have been raised by approximately 7 percent, the highest rate of increase since the early 2010s. The rate is exceptionally high in that the company was in the red last year.

The average annual salary of LG Electronics employees is likely to rise from approximately 86 million won to 90 million won or so. Given that about 40,000 persons are working for it, its labor cost is likely to substantially increase from 3,446.3 billion won this year.