美光台湾桃园工会按计划启动24小时罢工，台中HBM厂已签约和解，无确认停产

TAIPEI -- A Micron Technology labor union staged Taiwan's first-ever strike in the semiconductor industry on Thursday as part of a dispute over how huge windfall profits from the artificial intelligence boom are shared.
The union representing Micron workers in the northern city of Taoyuan is calling on the leading U.S. memory chipmaker to follow the example of South Korean rivals SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics by offering a regular profit-sharing scheme for its Taiwan employees.
The Taoyuan union told Nikkei Asia that the company did not address the profit-sharing proposal it raised during multiple negotiations mediated by the Taoyuan City government.
The union began its 24-hour strike in front of Micron's Taoyuan facility at 9 a.m. local time on Thursday.
Micron has been locked in a monthslong negotiation with employees at its operations in Taoyuan and Taichung, which are represented by two separate unions. Taiwan is a key production hub for the American company, accounting for over 60% of its output of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.
On Wednesday, Micron said it had reached an agreement with the Taichung union on a plan that would significantly increase employee salaries. Taichung, in central Taiwan, is Micron's production center for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a vital component in chips for artificial intelligence computing.
In addition to pay increases, employees will receive quarterly bonuses tied to Micron's financial performance, paid 50% in cash and 50% in stock, as well as three additional days of paid leave and higher employer contributions to their pension accounts, according to details Micron released on Thursday. This will apply to all its Taiwan operations.
"We thank union officials in Taoyuan for their rationality, and we respect their legal right to strike, but we are continuing to speak with them and hope to reach a win-win situation," Donghui Lu, corporate vice president of front-end operations at Micron and head of Micron Taiwan, said in response to the ongoing strike.
Micron said it will calculate the budget for quarterly profit-sharing bonuses by subtracting projected capital expenditure for the following quarter from net income for the current quarter.
Lu said it was rare for a multinational company to make such a significant change to its bonus system, calling it a breakthrough for the broader semiconductor industry. "I think these negotiations with employees have set a positive example for the industry, showing that meaningful progress can be achieved through constructive dialogue and efforts from both sides," he said.
Micron's Taiwan chief added that the profit-sharing scheme would mainly follow principles aligned with the company's global framework. But Micron will increase its contributions to its Taiwanese employees' retirement pension funds from 8% to 10%, the highest rate among all Taiwanese tech companies.
The escalating tensions between workers and memory chipmakers come amid an unprecedented shortage of memory chips due to the explosive demand for AI infrastructure. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have all reported record earnings in recent quarters.
Both Micron unions in Taiwan have seen their membership surge in a matter of months, from slightly more than 100 people to a total of more than 13,000.
"The company representatives said our average salary is higher than Micron's peers, but guess what? Our bonuses are much lower than those in South Korea," a manager working for Micron told Nikkei Asia. "They [company representatives] even emphasized that the company built more toilet stalls for us this year."
The immediate impact of the Taoyuan strike on production is not yet clear. Operations there mostly concern manufacturing DRAM chips, while the Taichung operation is in charge of HBM production as well as other advanced chip packaging and testing capabilities.
DRAM is the foundation not only for HBM but also for LPDDR and DDR memory, which are also used in AI computing applications. Micron last week opened its second advanced packaging plant in Taichung.
Micron has about 3,000 employees in Taoyuan, of whom about 2,400 are union members. In Taichung, the company employs about 12,300 people, including roughly 11,000 union members.
In September, Micron offered employees an additional bonus of 1 million New Taiwan dollars ($30,700) on top of its original package in an attempt to resolve the dispute, but this did not satisfy union demands for more structural adjustments, including pay rises and a profit-sharing framework.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te also publicly said he hopes that both Micron and its employees can reach a mutually acceptable solution that benefits both the company and its workers, as well as the overall labor environment in Taiwan.
Earlier this year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) employees in Taiwan also openly discussed the possibility of unionization and considered a strike amid growing discontent over how the company's profits were shared among staff.