Anyone who has asked for a raise knows the timing rule. You ask right after your company posts its best year ever, not during a losing stretch. Thousands of Micron Technology Inc. (MU) workers in Taiwan did exactly that this year.
They wanted a bigger slice of the memory boom’s record profits. On Nov. 5, Bloomberg reported that the fight had reached a construction site.
Micron has all but halted work on a planned chip plant in Taoyuan, Taiwan, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The project, called Fab 11E, was budgeted at $3 billion to $4.5 billion and was due to open in 2028.
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The trigger is a deal Micron thought was done. Reuters reported that it signed an agreement with its larger union in Taichung on Oct. 21. Executives now fear a smaller union in Taoyuan could get it overturned, according to Bloomberg.
Micron’s Taiwan workers want a formula, not a raise
The October deal was not stingy. Taiwan’s economy ministry said it would more than double junior engineers’ average annual package to NT$4 million ($121,450), according to Bloomberg. That is well above last year’s average engineer pay at listed Taiwanese chipmakers, according to 104 Job Bank data cited by Bloomberg.
The Taoyuan union wants Micron to share 15% of operating profit with employees worldwide. Union Chair Jerry Lin said members also want those payouts in cash. Its benchmark is Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which have adopted similar profit-sharing.
What strikes me is that this fight is no longer about the size of the check. It is about the rule that writes the check, and Micron’s own numbers explain why.
Micron reported fiscal 2026 revenue of $133.2 billion in its earnings release on Sept. 30. “Micron delivered record fiscal 2026 results, and we expect an even stronger fiscal 2027,” CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said.
Workers read those releases, too, and that record is exactly why Micron is resisting a formula tied to it.
Why Micron froze a plant instead of paying up
Paying up looks like the easy fix, but the math points the other way. Micron earned $99.3 billion in operating income in fiscal 2026, according to the same release. By my math, a 15% pool on that figure comes to about $15 billion a year.
That is three to five times Fab 11E’s entire budget. A plant is a one-time cost, while a profit formula comes back every year.
The formula would also travel. Because it covers staff worldwide, a Taiwan concession could become the template for Micron staff in the U.S., Japan, and Singapore. All-cash payouts would also reduce the stock portion that keeps engineers tied to a cyclical business.
Leverage matters, too. Bloomberg reported that the Taoyuan union represents fewer than 3,000 of Micron’s 15,000 workers in Taiwan. Reopening a deal Micron considers legally binding would reward a minority for unwinding it.
Freezing Fab 11E, meanwhile, leaves today’s production alone, since the plant was years from making chips. “We are confident in maintaining business continuity for our customers,” Micron said in a statement to Bloomberg that skipped the Taoyuan question.
I read the freeze as Micron reminding everyone it has other places to build. It has committed $250 billion to U.S. manufacturing and is expanding in Japan and Singapore.
Wall Street prices Micron like the boom will end
That matters for shareholders. Micron makes the memory inside phones, PCs, and AI servers, and its high-bandwidth chips work alongside Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) accelerators.
Even so, the stock trades at about 5 times forward earnings, according to StockAnalysis. That low multiple suggests investors doubt Micron can hold the 86.8% gross margin it reported for its fiscal fourth quarter.
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Analysts see it differently. StockAnalysis shows a Strong Buy consensus from 49 analysts, with an average price target of $1,562. Citi analyst Atif Malik kept a Buy rating and a $1,300 target on Oct. 29.
The shares have traded between $192.59 and $1,255 over the past year. That range shows how fast memory sentiment swings.
I don’t think the paused plant moves Micron’s earnings much before 2028. In a market short on memory, delayed supply may even support prices.
The labor terms are the real risk, because they hit the margins investors already doubt. Taiwan makes 60% of Micron’s DRAM, according to Bloomberg, so a strike would hurt far more than a paused plant. That puts the spotlight back on the union.
Micron’s Taiwan plans now hinge on the Taoyuan union
The next move belongs to Lin’s group. It is recruiting Taichung members to try to annul the October pact and force fresh talks, Lin said, according to Bloomberg. Taiwan’s economy ministry has backed the existing agreement and offered to help settle the dispute.
Taiwan has a lot riding on this. Micron is the island’s largest foreign investor, with close to $50 billion invested there over three decades.
Samsung and SK Hynix set the profit sharing benchmark that Micron’s Taoyuan union now cites. Micron has answered with a stalled plant instead of a new formula.
The memory boom made chipmakers enormously profitable. The next contest is over who keeps that money, and where companies build once workers ask for a fixed share.
