Tech & AI
Micron's Taoyuan union rejects pay offer as 1,633 members vote no, extending Taiwan memory-chip labour dispute
Talks are postponed to October 27 by a typhoon after a 24-hour warning strike at the US chipmaker's DRAM and HBM site.
HedgeWeekly Tech & AI Desk ·
Workers at Micron Technology's Taoyuan operations in Taiwan have rejected the US memory-chip maker's pay proposal, Taiwan's Central News Agency reported on October 23. The union said 1,633 of the 1,637 members who voted opposed the offer, close to 70% of its membership. Union officials had staged a 24-hour warning strike from 9am on October 22, and talks planned for October 23 were pushed back to October 27 because of a typhoon.
Micron's offer, presented on October 22, included a new quarterly profit-sharing bonus, structural pay rises, higher shift allowances, three extra days of paid leave and a rise in its pension contribution rate to 10% from 8%. Similar terms were signed on October 21 by a separate union at Taichung, Micron's largest Taiwan site, which employs about 12,300 of its roughly 15,000 staff on the island. The Taoyuan union, which has 2,335 members among about 3,000 workers, wants a long-term scheme that gives employees 15% of operating profit.
The union has said its action is not meant to stop production, and an industry source quoted by Taiwan's China Times said inventory could cover a one-day stoppage. Taoyuan makes DRAM, the main working memory in computers, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), stacked chips that feed data to AI processors. Micron says it has invested more than T$1.6 trillion, about $50 billion, in Taiwan, and said it would keep talking with the union.
Why it matters: memory supply is already tight because of AI demand, so any lasting disruption at a Micron HBM site could affect prices and deliveries to AI server makers. The dispute also tests labour costs across the sector: the union points to rivals' formulas, with Samsung Electronics agreeing in May to set aside 10.5% of its chip division's operating profit for bonuses and SK hynix allocating 10% of annual operating profit. Investors will watch the October 27 talks and whether more members join any further action.