this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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most of that (7% of profits out of 12%) in stock vested over 2 years, so samsung got themselves a breather here. it might be also that these shares are at peak valuation now
Seems like a good thing. Aligning workers and shareholders seems reasonable. And it even seems vaguely lefty, with the workers having a bigger stake in the means of production and all. Valuation might go down, and if there is a global recession most of our 401ks will go down, too. I don't see any disproportionate downside.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but owning stock in a company is nothing like owning the means of production and all this does is give the company a pretext of making employees work against their class interests. An employer might mention that a strike would decrease stock value and scare a worker into staying in poor working conditions despite a strike being better for them for gaining long term benefits. Also, bonuses are a bad form of compensation in general because they often are dependent on decisions outside of workers control and in this case come from AI demand. Now those workers feel as though increasing prices, increasing AI use, and decreasing the number of employees all leads to them personally benefiting. All of these are against the interests of their own class.
It's better than not having stock though. Same with having bonuses.
I get what you're saying though and I'm not even gonna disagree. Just that it'd be good for people to have stock in the companies they work for. It definitely is not the same as owning the means of production.
Stock is better than nothing, but the equivalent in cash would be better for sure. They can then invest it how they see fit if so desired and unlike company stock there's no vesting period or restrictions on selling. I'm glad the employees are getting something, I just think it's important to realize that this is better for the company than paying cash bonuses and is not really similar to owning the means of production in any meaningful sense.
I said vaguely. I'm not a communist or Marxist and recognize the limits of my understanding.
The difference between owning the means of production and sharing ownership with investors feels meaningful but not diametrically opposed. Without the investors, the workers would STILL have to weigh their ownership stake against working conditions and determine what is in their best interest.
I agree that bonuses being outside the workers control makes them not great overall, however in this case the bonus isn't cash, but a stake in the company which again ties the payment to future performance. Not in a way the workers can directly control, but there is always going to be friction between what workers deserve to be paid for their work and what customers are willing to pay for the product. Ordinarily that friction serves to make investors fabulously rich and the workers largely get exploited.
Anyway, I said vaguely and I stand by it. If you want to go in depth on your views of capitalism and Marxism, I promise to read and likely be fascinated. But I think you read that with a lot more intent than I originally meant to impart. I probably should've just left that bit out, knowing Lemmy users.
I was responding less to the lefty comment and more to the idea that aligning workers with shareholders is a good thing. If you don't subscribe to left-wing ideas, and sit more in the lib territory (non derogatory in this instance) of the spectrum, I can understand why we would disagree on that.
Generic leftist drivel below:
The profit motive is inherently exploitative of the working class. In my opinion, any attempts to align the working class with the profit motive is just a way for the owning class to dismantle class solidarity. Not to get too into theory, but this is where the idea of and disagreements regarding the petite bourgeois often come in. There is a concept of a managerial class who does not necessarily own the means of production, but profits based off of exploitation of the people beneath them. A lot of people consider this its own class, or at the very least class traders, but what it really is is just working class people who the owning class has convinced to promote the interest of the owning class. If the owning class can divert a large enough portion of the working class into that sector then there is not much hope for change. You often hear about blue collar and white collar workers, but discussions of people who explicitly do not have to work don't come up as frequently. You're seeing more people talk about billionaires nowadays though, and if enough white collar workers realize that they are much closer to blue-collar workers than the billionaires I think we would be in a much better place.
I suggested I'd probably be interested, and I am. I have to explore my thoughts on profit motive and owner class vs. working class. We don't see entirely eye to eye, but there are a lot of layers to unpack and I've been at this reply off and on for some time now. I drafted a much more detailed response, but it's undergone several full-draft rewrites, and I think I need to just do my thinking offline and this thread will be long dead before I come back around to it.
Anyway, I do appreciate your response.
I appreciate your response and openness too. I will also sometimes write full responses just to delete them, so I understand that struggle.
I doubt I have a unique perspective to offer, but if at some point in the future you do have a thought or question about this you'd like to share with me, I'll be around.