Micron Paid Up to 68 Months of Pay. Its Taiwan Workers Voted 99% to Strike Anyway.
Micron's Taoyuan union won a 99% strike vote on October 7 after record one-time bonuses. The demand is a permanent 15% of operating profit, worth about $6.6 billion on the September quarter alone.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
A 99% mandate at Micron's largest hub
Micron's Taoyuan union said on October 7 that 1,994 members, 99% of those casting ballots, voted to authorize a strike at the chipmaker's largest manufacturing hub 12. The base makes the DRAM and HBM behind a quarter Micron has guided to $61.5 billion of revenue, plus or minus $1.5 billion 13. No strike date is set, and the union says it still hopes Micron will table a concrete profit-sharing proposal first 1.
The company's two Taiwan unions represent more than 80% of its roughly 15,000 island workers 1. Negotiations broke down on September 21 and mediation ended without agreement, while the second union, in Taichung, is still negotiating 41.
The fight is the formula, not the size
The people voting to walk are among the best-paid production workers in the company's history. Taiwan packages for fiscal 2026 run to 35 to 68 months of base salary, inside rewards for more than 60,000 employees worldwide that include a T$1 million ($31,386) cash bonus for Taiwan staff 41. The union's objection is that it all expires: it wants 15% of Micron's operating profit allocated to employees globally through a permanent, verifiable formula, the kind Samsung Electronics and SK hynix already run 5.
The demand, priced against the quarter
Priced against the books, the demand is enormous. The quarter ended September 3 carried $43.75 billion of operating income on $54.23 billion of revenue, and fiscal 2026 finished at $99.34 billion of operating income on $133.19 billion of revenue 3.
Fifteen percent of that final quarter alone is about $6.6 billion, against a bill of roughly $470 million if all 15,000 Taiwan employees took the full T$1 million 31. Across the fiscal year, the formula would have claimed about $15 billion 3. Recurrence, not size, is the fight.
Micron's quarterly operating income went from $1.5B to $43.8B in nine quarters
Data
| Operating income | |
|---|---|
| Q3 '24 | $1.52B |
| Q4 '24 | $2.17B |
| Q1 '25 | $1.77B |
| Q2 '25 | $2.17B |
| Q3 '25 | $3.65B |
| Q4 '25 | $6.14B |
| Q1 '26 | $16.14B |
| Q2 '26 | $33.32B |
| Q3 '26 | $43.75B |
The market is not pricing a walkout
Investors are treating the threat as weather. The shares fell more than 2% premarket on October 7 and traded 1.73% lower in early New York business, inside a broader semiconductor slump, after more than tripling this year past $1,000 16. Micron says it takes employees' concerns seriously and will keep working through dialogue and mediation, and Taiwan's labor ministry has urged concrete proposals 1.
The consequences run wider than the tape. A written formula would hand every memory workforce the same precedent, and a walkout would stall DRAM and HBM supply in a market where SK hynix and Samsung, at 25% and 38% of DRAM revenue, and a CXMT that has climbed to 10% would take the share Micron fails to ship 157. On the workplace platform Blind, 75% of polled respondents back the strikers' extra 15% 8.
Two October dates
Two dates frame the window. The union is urging members to take October 19 off for a Taipei rally it insists is not a strike 1. Mediation with the Taichung union follows on October 22 4. The union is not asking Micron to be generous once; it is asking to be paid every time the cycle runs.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
