Micron Taiwan Union Launches Island's First Chip-Industry Strike Over AI Memory Windfall

Micron's Taoyuan union launched Taiwan's first-ever semiconductor-industry strike on Oct 22 after 1,994 of 2,258 members voted to walk out, demanding a one-off 83-month-salary bonus and a permanent 15% operating-profit share on quarterly bonuses tied to the AI memory boom. Micron, which makes 50-60% of its chips in Taiwan, had offered the equivalent of up to 68 months of pay last month; workers rejected that one-off payment as insufficient relative to HBM windfalls. The strike follows a similar pattern seen at Samsung in South Korea, which averted a walkout with a 10.5%-of-operating-profit deal.