Micron union secures strike approval

INDUSTRY STANDARD: Most global semiconductor companies have tied employee bonuses directly to corporate profits, the union said, urging Micron to do the same

• By Lisa Wang / Staff Reporter

• • Add TT as Preferred Source

  • 

  • 

  • 

Micron Memory Taiwan Co’s (台灣美光) Taoyuan union secured strike authorization yesterday after a six-day vote, ramping up pressure on management to build a reasonable profit-sharing mechanism.

Before the strike, the Taoyuan union “encourages” members to join a protest in Taipei on Oct. 19, union chairman Jerry Lin (林哲瑞) told a news conference in Taipei.

The union did not rule out staging a snap strike, Lin said.

Members of the union representing workers at Micron Technology Inc’s operations in Taoyuan attend a news conference in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: CNA

The union has 2,258 registered members, with 88.3 percent backing the strike, he said.

The vote comes as Micron’s board of directors is meeting today and tomorrow in the US. The union expects the board to respond favorably to its request to overhaul the company’s bonus policy, Lin said.

The union asked the Boise, Idaho-based company to set up a transparent, fair bonus distribution mechanism and allocate 15 percent of its operating profits to employee bonuses, Lin said.

Micron previously distributed 10 percent of its net profit as employee bonuses, demonstrating that such a profit-sharing scheme is a viable solution, the union said.

Most global semiconductor companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Micron’s South Korean competitors, Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc, have adopted similar approaches tying employee bonuses directly to corporate profits, the union added.

Taiwanese memory producers Nanya Technology Co (南亞科技) and Macronix International Co (旺宏) have allocated 6 percent of pre-tax profit and 15 percent of net profit to reward employees respectively, the union said.

Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電) and Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) have also adopted a similar mechanism, it said.

Micron employees’ annual payouts are mainly subject to the terms of the incentives pay plan (IPP) with several limitations. At issue is the five-month boundary, which means a typical top-performing engineer’s actual IPP payout maxes at about five months of base salary.

Micron Taichung Union, which represents about 10,000 Micron employees in Taichung and Tainan, yesterday said it is to launch a second-round negotiation with management on Oct. 22.

The union would not rule out holding a strike vote if the company fails to address its request, Micron Taichung Union chairman Mark Hsu (徐志銘) said.

The unions said that manufacturing capacity from Micron’s Taoyuan and Taichung facilities represents more than 60 percent of the US memory chipmaker’s total global output.

Micron Memory Taiwan yesterday said in a statement that it “respects our team members’ lawful rights and the applicable legal process.”

“We hear the concerns our team members have raised and take them seriously,” the statement said.

To prevent widespread strikes in Taiwan, Micron on Sept. 11 temporarily stepped outside the standard IPP framework by offering extraordinary, one-off cash appreciation bonuses of NT$1 million (US$31,451) for Taiwan employees and 100 percent equity penetration to boost total employee rewards up to 35 to 68 months’ worth of pay for this fiscal year.