Micron Taoyuan Union Begins Taiwan's First Semiconductor Strike

Micron's Taoyuan workers walked off the job at 9 a.m. on Thursday, starting a 24-hour stoppage that Nikkei Asia reports is Taiwan's first-ever strike in the semiconductor industry. The fight is over how a U.S. memory maker riding an AI boom should split that windfall with the people running its Taiwan fabs.

The union said 1,994 members, or 99% of those casting ballots, voted in favour of a strike. Workers want a one-time fiscal 2026 bonus equal to about 83 months of salary, plus a permanent 15% share of quarterly operating profit starting fiscal 2027. Micron's September offer of up to 68 months of pay was rejected as a one-off that did not lock in a longer-term formula.

South Korea has already set a benchmark. Samsung's memory union averted a walkout by tying bonuses to 10.5% of chip-division operating profit, and SK Hynix later agreed to 10% of annual operating profit, uncapped. Taoyuan is holding out for the higher number. Taiwan is a crucial production centre for Micron's DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which go into AI servers, and makes 50 to 60 percent of the company's output.

The timing cuts both ways. On October 21, Micron and the union at its Taichung plant signed a collective bargaining agreement, taking that site off the picket calendar. Negotiations with the Taoyuan union collapsed the same evening. Micron said it was "committed to constructive engagement" with both unions.

This is one of several labor and infrastructure flashpoints we've been tracking across the AI infrastructure beat as the memory supply crunch tightens.