Handful of Micron workers strike in Taiwan

TAOYUAN, Taiwan – A handful of workers at a Micron Technology plant in Taiwan went on strike on Oct 22 after their union and the US chip giant failed to agree on employee demands for a greater share of the company’s profits, a union official said.

Huge global appetite for chips used in artificial intelligence data centres has sent revenues soaring for firms that design, produce and assemble them. But as their earnings skyrocket, workers are demanding a bigger cut of profits.

The Micron dispute follows recent labour disagreements in South Korea, where Samsung Electronics averted a strike by agreeing to a deal to distribute bonuses equivalent to 10.5% of operating profit to its semiconductor employees.

Five of the striking Micron workers gathered outside the Taoyuan plant, near Taipei, as the company held a conference call with hundreds of other employees at the facility.

A banner at the site said: “Micron failed to propose a profit-sharing scheme. The Taoyuan union will immediately begin strike action.”

Jerry Lin, the chairman of the union representing the Taoyuan workers, told reporters: “If you give up, that’s when the game is over.

“The Taoyuan union has not given up. We held negotiations at the Taoyuan City government on Oct 21, but no consensus was reached.”

He added that talks with the US firm would continue on Oct 23.

Micron Taiwan chairman Lu Dong-hui told reporters the decision to strike was “regrettable” but the company remained “fully committed to continuing sincere communications with them”.

More than 2,000 employees at the Taoyuan plant had planned to stop working on Oct 22 as they pushed for a bigger share of the company’s earnings.

The one-day strike was supposed to coincide with mediation talks between Micron and the union representing workers at the company’s bigger facility in Taichung.

‘Reached consensus’

In a joint statement on Oct 21, however, Micron and the Taichung union announced they had “reached consensus on a number of matters and formally signed a labour management agreement”.

Micron had agreed to move to a quarterly profit-sharing bonus system and increase the company’s pension contribution, Lu said on Oct 22.

But Lin said the Taoyuan union’s views had not been properly considered in the negotiations in Taichung.

“They instead reached a unilateral agreement with the Taichung union. We strongly condemn this,” he added.

Wei Yu-ling, another union official, warned that more Micron workers could join the strike action if the company fails “to present a sincere proposal”.

Lin said the union was “calling on the company to put forward a concrete proposal and engage in substantive negotiations, rather than saying, as it did yesterday, that it had signed a confidentiality agreement with the Taichung union and was therefore unwilling to disclose the details”.

After the meeting with Micron on Oct 21, the Taoyuan workers will be asked if they support the company’s proposal, union documents seen by AFP news agency show.

Engineer Hsu Fun-ting, who has worked for Micron for 26 years, said she was “quite disappointed” at the company’s failure to respond to the employees’ demands.

“We are all employees of Micron Taiwan, yet the company signed an agreement only with the Taichung union, and even made them sign a confidentiality agreement,” the 45-year-old said.

“I don’t think that’s how the company should be acting.”

The unions had been seeking a one-off bonus of 83 months’ salary as well as a permanent system that allocates 15% of the company’s operating profits to worker bonuses, distributed quarterly rather than annually.

Micron, which makes around 50% to 60% of its chips in Taiwan, said in September it would give the equivalent of up to 68 months of pay to staff but the one-off payment was rejected by workers. AFP