Micron Technology’s Taichung workers entered labor mediation on Friday demanding a permanent share of 15% of the chipmaker’s global operating profit, with a second mediation session scheduled for Monday and a possible strike vote if the company does not produce a concrete proposal.
There is no strike at Micron today and no reported production interruption. As of late Friday, no public outcome from the September 18 Taichung mediation had been announced. The next dated risk is September 21, when Micron is due to continue mediation with its Taoyuan union.
The two unions represent more than 80% of Micron’s roughly 15,000 employees in Taiwan, according to Reuters. An internal union survey in August found that around 80% of participating workers supported strike action if negotiations failed.
The Union Wants 15% of Operating Profit, Not Another One-Off Bonus
The core demand is a permanent profit-sharing system beginning in fiscal 2027.
The unions want Micron to allocate 15% of global operating profit to employees through what they describe as a “transparent and verifiable” mechanism, with payments made quarterly rather than through discretionary annual bonuses.
Micron has responded with a much larger fiscal 2026 compensation package covering more than 60,000 employees globally. In Taiwan, employees who joined before August 29, 2025 will receive a T$1 million cash bonus, worth about $31,500 at the exchange rate cited by Reuters, while later hires receive a prorated amount. Performance bonuses and stock awards are also part of the package.
The union’s objection is not that Micron paid additional compensation. It is that the award remains a one-time measure rather than a permanent formula tied directly to profit. Union representatives have also criticized Micron for announcing the package while formal mediation was underway and without first reaching an agreement with workers.
Micron has said it will continue listening to employees and participate in the mediation process in good faith.
Monday Is the Second Date That Matters
The September 18 Taichung meeting is only one half of the immediate calendar.
Micron and the Taoyuan union are scheduled to return to mediation on Monday, September 21. Union chairman Jerry Lin told Reuters that if the company produces no concrete profit-sharing proposal during the September 18 and 21 meetings and workers conclude that negotiations are simply being delayed, the unions will declare talks broken and move toward a strike vote.
That would still not mean an immediate production shutdown. Taiwan labor law requires the mediation process to fail before industrial action can proceed, and a strike would then require the necessary union vote.
For Micron stock investors, the distinction is important: this is currently a labor risk with two explicit negotiation dates, not an operating disruption.
Micron’s 84.6% Margin Explains Why the Dispute Matters
The argument over profit sharing is arriving during an extraordinary part of the memory cycle.
Micron reported a GAAP gross margin of 84.6% in its fiscal third quarter, up from 37.7% a year earlier, as tight DRAM and high-bandwidth memory supply pushed pricing sharply higher. Revenue reached $41.46 billion and operating income was $33.32 billion.
FinanceFeeds recently compared Micron’s 84.6% margin with Nvidia’s 75% margin, highlighting how dramatically the economics of memory have changed during the AI infrastructure buildout.
The company is also fighting for share in a concentrated DRAM market. Micron reached 25% of global DRAM revenue in the second quarter, just one percentage point behind SK Hynix, according to Counterpoint data previously covered by FinanceFeeds.
Those profits are precisely what workers are pointing to. TrendForce noted in August that the Taiwan unions have compared Micron’s system with profit-sharing arrangements at Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, while roughly 80% of workers polled in a preliminary union survey supported potential strike action.
Taiwan Is the Supply-Chain Risk
Taiwan is Micron’s largest manufacturing base and a critical production center for DRAM and HBM used in AI servers. Any prolonged stoppage would therefore land in a memory market that is already running with limited spare supply.
FinanceFeeds has tracked how that constraint has spread beyond HBM itself, with AI demand pulling manufacturing capacity away from conventional DRAM and pushing some DDR5 prices sharply higher.
For now, however, nothing has stopped. Friday’s mediation puts the labor dispute on the calendar; Monday determines whether it remains a negotiation or moves one step closer to a formal strike vote.
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