Choi Seung-ho (right, front), head of Samsung Electronics Co's largest labor union, shakes hands with Yeo Myeong-gu, head of Samsung Electronics Co.'s device solutions division's people team, after signing a tentative agreement in Suwon, Wednesday. (Newsis) Around two-thirds of unionized workers at Samsung Electronics Co. on Friday voted on a tentative wage deal following a last-minute agreement with management that averted a strike planned earlier this week.As of 8:25 p.m., around 66 percent of members of the Samsung Electronics Labor Union, the largest union at the tech giant with 70,850 members, had cast their ballots on the first day of the vote, according to the union.Around 69 percent of the 19,000-member National Samsung Electronics Union had also taken part in the vote, which will run through next Wednesday.The labor union and management reached the agreement just an hour before an 18-day strike was set to begin at the world's top memory chipmaker on Thursday.The agreement will be ratified if more than half of eligible union members participate in the vote, with a majority of those voting approving the deal. If the proposal fails to secure majority support, labor and management will have to return to the negotiating table.At stake is disagreement among members of the tech giant's different business divisions, with those in the device experience division, which covers mobile and TV businesses, expressing frustration over lower bonus payouts compared with the device solutions division, which oversees semiconductors.Labor and management had been deadlocked since late last year over performance-based bonuses tied to earnings from the tech giant's artificial intelligence-related semiconductor business amid the ongoing global memory chip boom.Under the deal, Samsung will allocate a special semiconductor performance bonus equivalent to 10.5 percent of business performance earnings, without a cap.The special bonuses will be paid in company stock over at least 10 years, based on targets for the chip division to achieve more than 200 trillion won ($132 billion) in annual operating profit from 2026 to 2028 and 100 trillion won from 2029 to 2035.Of the total bonus pool, 40 percent will be allocated to the division as a whole, while 60 percent will be distributed to individual business units. A decision on how to divide the pool among loss-making divisions -- one of the most contentious issues during negotiations -- was postponed for one year.Based on forecasts that Samsung's operating profit could reach 300 trillion won this year, the agreement could translate into bonus payouts of up to 600 million won for each of the 28,000 employees in the company's profitable chip division. (Yonhap)