TSMC Arizona struggles to overcome vast differences between Taiwanese and US work culture
TSMC Arizona struggles to overcome vast differences between Taiwanese and US work culture
Worker treatment that's acceptable in Taiwan simply won't be tolerated by US employees
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), one of the world’s largest advanced computer chip manufacturers, continues finding its efforts to get its Arizona facility up and running to be more difficult than it anticipated. The chip maker’s 5nm wafer fab was supposed to go online in 2024 but has faced numerous setbacks and now isn’t expected to begin production until 2025. The trouble the semiconductor has been facing boils down to a key difference between Taiwan and the U.S.: workplace culture. A New York Times report highlights the continuing struggle.
One big problem is that TSMC has been trying to do things the Taiwanese way, even in the U.S. In Taiwan, TSMC is known for extremely rigorous working conditions, including 12-hour work days that extend into the weekends and calling employees into work in the middle of the night for emergencies. TSMC managers in Taiwan are also known to use harsh treatment and threaten workers with being fired for relatively minor failures.
TSMC quickly learned that such practices won’t work in the U.S. Recent reports indicated that the company’s labor force in Arizona is leaving the new plant over these perceived abuses, and TSMC is struggling to fill those vacancies. TSMC is already heavily dependent on employees brought over from Taiwan, with almost half of its current 2,200 employees in Phoenix coming over as Taiwanese transplants.
Just imagine what they would face in Europe, where workers even have rights!
Teaching the Asian colleagues the fine art of blocking factories and burning tires.
Idk I seen the South Korean picket lines, that looks like solidarity to me.
And that’s why they won’t set up a fab in Europe, the cost of manufacturing would simply be too high.
I'm reminded of the time Walmart tried to enter Germany with their work culture. But in their case it wasn't just that the Germans didn't like it. It was illegal. And the German customers were weirded out by Walmart employees smiling and being so cheerful all the time.
Apple still tries to have the cherry up-beat customer services department in the UK and it doesn't work. It's a Saturday, no one wants to be doing this call, don't pretend otherwise it's weird.
But in their case it wasn’t just that the Germans didn’t like it. It was illegal.
I want to learn more?...
Don't know if it's in the video, but as far as I remember it was about how working hours were calculated and about worker surveillance. And Walmart trying to control worker's private lifes by forbidding sexual relationships between workers.
This makes me laugh because I work for a UK company that was bought out by an American company, who's trying to treat the UK staff how they would treat US staff - and it's not going well.
Our American colleagues cannot fathom how much time we take off for holidays, especially around Christmas. They also got a shock when doing some recent "restructuring" they couldn't just fire a bunch of UK folks.
Our American colleagues cannot fathom how much time we take off for holidays
So many days if it’s like colombia. They have 37 holidays off each year. It’s great but im constantly forgetting which days are festivals so i always end up walking to the store and then returning home dejected because i couldn’t buy my cheese.
In china I had a UK roommate. He was on the phone with his mom mid week when she should have been at work. I asked if she was sick and he was like "No. She took some vacation days to tidy the house." My jaw hit the floor. My vacation days in the US were so precious and so few that I'd never fathom using any to do chores. Unreal that you can have so much vacation you'd elect to spend it doing chores.
Damn. I wish I could take time off just to clean my house. It needs it.
Sounds like the time Walmart tried to get a foothold in germany. Their american way of treating workers, but especially their way of treating customers (greeters at the door) crashed and burned hard here.
Fintech?
Not quite but tech for sure
extremely rigorous working conditions, including 12-hour work days that extend into the weekends and calling employees into work in the middle of the night for emergencies. TSMC managers in Taiwan are also known to use harsh treatment and threaten workers with being fired for relatively minor failures.
Funny. The same issues that Tesla is experiencing in Germany.
Yeah.. I personally was surprised there are developed nations with a more toxic corpo culture than the US. But apparently the Asian powerhouses are all built on corporate servitude.
For a lot of Asian countries the "asian dream" is still somewhat realistic.
Just look at China or Korea. Many of the older folks there grew up in abject poverty, but the countries managed to develop themselves through hard labor into modern, wealthy nations. The promise of "my kids will have it better" was actually true for them. And that promise still drives a lot of the work culture. In China the first cracks already appear, since for the first time in 50 years or so, the current youth has no way up anymore.
Happy workers are hard workers, treat them like shit and they'll walk right out the door.
Correct! Well unless, they're starving and need to feed their families.
Aren't the machines TSMC uses made in the Netherlands? They're the only ones who can get down to that size, and they do it working 36 hours a week...
My brother worked for such a Dutch company (ASM) and often got sent overseas to supervise the setting up of the production lines with these machines.
He mentioned when he'd get sent to Asia, the workers would make sure to get it done over a weekend, while implementing the same setup would take 2 to 3 weeks in the US. In part that was due to the working conditions mentioned, but also simple lack of planning in case of the latter (things would grind down to a haalt because certain changes would need to be made, and the person responsible for the decision wouldn't respond for hours or days, etc).
Side note: while 36 hour work weeks are common in the Netherlands, 40 hours is still the norm in my experience.
A large chunk of ASMLs workforce is in the US actually.
ETA: about half their workforce is in Europe
It can't be just that. The cultural difference is real in the sense that there is in Asia in general more obedience or reverence or discipline or selflessness or whatever you call it, that you simply don't find at scale in western civilisations. Whether it's good or bad I don't judge
3 new chip fabs open recently around phx, which is in low-altitude desert, has had water supply issues for so long there's a canal running from the Colo river through it all the way to Tucson.
Which is fed by a reservoir so low they find old mobster kills in barrels and might have to stop making power.
Why so stupid and short-sighted?
Ah, "faith-based".
And a Republican governor made the deals. Who also allowed water to be used to grow alfalfa that's sent to Saudi to feed their horses.
$$$ + no sense
Cows not horses. Peninsular Arabs are some of the few populations on Earth with the mutation that allows for lactose tolerance among adults. It developed over millennia of having nothing else to consume.
Interesting...the company I applied to told me that it was grown and stored to be flown to Saudi for feeding thoroughbred horses. No mention of cows.
76% of AZ water use is for agriculture, but that's besides the point. I've read that most of the water used in a fab gets recycled, so once up and running, water usage isn't as much if an issue as you'd think.
Agriculture probably shouldn't be happening in deserts
You raise very valid points, and water usage (and over allocation) is a huge issue but it is worth mentioning that Arizona has fairly consistent and predictable weather, decently reliable power grids (with access to cleaner energy sources like solar, hydro, and nuclear), and is pretty seismically stable.
Don't get me wrong, water consumption is going to be a huge issue once these plants really get going, but I don't think it's entirely stupid and nonsensical to park them where they did.
Just more evidence that conservatism is not a legitimate foundation for governance. Conservatism should be a disqualifier for positions of government leadership.
Intel has been receiving billions during the current administration and the last 2 generations of processors are defective.
They had to reanimate Gelsinger to try to save Intel from shitty decisions and are still flailing.
Meanwhile people on SSA have to fight for disability and achools for supplies, unless they're voucher factories.
Govt still using predatory vendors like Google, Adode, and Microsoft in schools, so teaching students how to use subscription software rather than alternatives.
I think the problem is revolving doors between regulation and regulated entities.
Not a surprise given that worker rights are practically non-existant in the East.
Still wild that TSMC thought they could pull that on western workers. I hope they realize it's not gonna happen and rethink their processes.
They're probably more likely to pack up and leave. Some people are just too stubborn-stupid to adapt.
They aren’t stubborn, it’s simply way easier for them to make a profit in Taiwan instead. If ever the workers in Taiwan refused 12 hour shifts then TSMC would see the writing on the wall.
Something similar happened when Foxconn first opened iPhone in India.
Really? Nobody at TSMC thought to google “biggest mistake companies make when opening US plants”? Because this has all happened before
Because this has all happened before
Humans generally don't consider this.
Specifically East Asian managers, I suppose, think they are the ones who'll finally do it right and make the serfs grow rice by the schedule and without complaints, and those previous attempts were done by some failures and discards who don't know how to hammer down nails that go up and so on.
(Not racist, just joking)
Beatings will continue until morale improves.
These shiti corps are dealing with demographic shift in US labour force coupled with severe disillusionment since comp barely justifies showing uo half the time.
Why anyone would break a sweat to make another man rich lol
People are taking notice.
perceived abuses
Way to be passive aggressive, haha. Next they'll be apologising "we're sorry you feel that way" :P
I remember watching a documentary a few years ago where this exact situation happened. Chinese company buys American company, tries to establish their work culture and it just doesn't work.
It’s the same the world over. I’ve worked for years for a western company which has got a large part of their business in Asia and China.
You try taking our “western ways” of leadership to China and see how well it fares; what I would consider “leaving space for a leader to operate and feel accountable” is seen as “my leader has no fucking clue what he is doing; he never tells me what he wants me to do”.
Culture eats everything for breakfast. As a western leader in China you have to act like a controlling maniac (in my cultural frame) to be seen as an effective leader in China.
And it goes both ways. My brother reports to a Chinese manager transplanted to the west and she “desperately wants to micromanage everything” according to the western team.
We are all trying our best.
Probably American Factory from 2019. Definitely a recommended watch for anyone unfamiliar with the topic.
Yep that’s probably the one. Super depressing, especially all the anti-union tactics.
Went back to see the trailer and yeah, that's the one.
largest microchip manufacturer on the planet
front entrance looks like an abandoned 80s era mall
They just built this! I mean not everything has to look like a cybertruck but why does it already look 40 years old
It doesn’t mean that the US factory is any less capable. What needs reworking is meeting the expectation and planning for contingencies. There should be ongoing shifts, specialized teams, rotation, mitigation, etc. I think our output is comparable but it’s done more safely and sustainable over a longer time VS grinding workers to dust and replacing them.
It's not about capabilities, it's about cost.
If you can exploit your workers, pay shit wages for long hours, you'll get a cheaper product. You can get the same output by applying higher standards, but that would mean hiring more people.
The more time i spend in manufacturing environments ( I spend all my time there) the less i see actual product being the finished good. Business are setting themselves up for this autopilot pipe dream of "AI gonna fix everything" marketing/engineering utopia and in reality all it's doing is dividing your operations crew and management. They are neglecting equipment, default mode of compliance is non compliance because of awful processes and quality cutbacks (staffing staffing staffing) and at the end you get a product that's probably not gmp but who cares it's shipping.
I work in a fab and it's pretty industry standard to run 12 hr shifts for operators (3 on 4 off then 4 on 3 off) and if your in engineering or IT be ready to be on call cause they don't want a 20-100 million+ machine down any longer then absolutely necessary.
I also work in a fab. We have the 3-4-4-3 rotating shift pattern just like everyone else, but we don't treat our people like cattle, unlike TSMC. We also tend to slightly overstaff, versus TSMC that understaffs and drives their people harder to make up for the difference.
I don't know how you can understaff a fab like there is either an operator at the tool or there isn't...not saying your wrong you very well could be 100% correct but it doesn't make sense in this environment like you can't run a process faster if its a 10 week run to get that lot out you need a certain number of people to run tools during that process...again I'm just talking from what I see and I'm only in IT so...
Hire more to work regular 8h shifts.
Honestly once you get used to 12 hour shifts you come to prefer them. You have half the year off before you factor in vacation and sick leave. There is built in overtime every day. The time doesn't feel much longer than an 8 hour day.
12 hour night shift was rough. The work hours weren't bad but it was too hard to get on regular hours on my days off.
IT be ready to be on call
Pretty standard for all systems IT
Im IT on call.
They call, and call, and call. I game and hike and sleep. Monday, I email them the part of my contract that says "best effort to respond after hours when available"
Turns out I'm rarely available.
True
Why not just have IT people on-site then?
My current employer I couldn't tell you why we don't have nightshift IT but the last place I was at we had 24hr coverage with me drawing the short straw weekend nights not much fun but the people made it chill
That's def manufacturing in general, worked for a while in a flat roll steel mill originally in galvanizing and eventually some plant wide stuff. A new galv line is easily in that range (they'll go for the cheapest bid and then spend twice that remediating design/QC issues), large scale production isn't cheap!
Reminds me of the Netflix show “American Factory” about a Chinese factory opening in the US.
Quite a fascinating clash of cultures.
While TSMC is considered by many in Taiwan as the pinnacle of engineering jobs, other companies in Arizona are competing for that labor pool. Intel, in particular, is expanding its Arizona chip factory.
Ya, so about Intel.....
Is this what they mean when they say they're creating jobs?
Same thing happened when Kia entered Europe. Unusually low pay combined with mandatory morning employee marching and exercising in the factory, combined with threats of physical punishment for "under performing" workers.
threats of physical punishment
This can bring people to jail in Germany.
I hope they can be held accountable for mistreating those 'transplants" (what an ugly word!) too. But I guess that would be easier here in EU than in USA.
When a company opens a facility in another country, why don't they just higher local people to be the managers?
Because they don't know or trust them
So what happens to Taiwanese manufacturing when their population collapses due to a super low birthrate. They right behind South Korea in lowest TFR.
It's happening all over the place. They're either going to have to lean heavily into automation (where possible), and/or accept mass immigration from parts of the world that continue to have a high birth rate – although as we're seeing in a lot of places, that can be a tough sell politically.
accept mass immigration from parts of the world that continue to have a high birth rate
Would that not likely result in similar, but different, friction between cultural expectations about working conditions etc?
To my thinking you'd still have the problem TMSC is having right now, just more widespread as they have to adapt to whatever the culture being imported everywhere to shore up worker counts is everywhere it is happening.
W for workers rights, L for US fab production
Oh, I think I saw this movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_(film)
Well hopefully it fails and sells to a not terrible company.
In Taiwan, TSMC is known for extremely rigorous working conditions, including 12-hour work days that extend into the weekends and calling employees into work in the middle of the night for emergencies. TSMC managers in Taiwan are also known to use harsh treatment and threaten workers with being fired for relatively minor failures.
I'll say this again: we need to seize the means of production.
And AZ struggles to update environmental regs... https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09082024/arizona-copper-mining-water-impact/
“We’re all on wells out here and no one can give us an answer as to what aquifer the water is going to be coming from,” Melissa said of the potential mine in the Galiuro Mountains.
Worrying over water is nothing new in Arizona. Nearly 80 percent of the state lacks any groundwater protections, which has allowed large agricultural operations to move in and pump as much as they want without even keeping track of how much they suck from aquifers or paying a penny for it, leading residential wells in some areas to run dry. Water experts, local leaders and rural residents have pushed for years to change that, with the governor now also calling for action, but legislation to resolve the issue has proven divisive in the state legislature.
Mining operations can also pump as much as they want, even when aquifers are tapped out.
I was looking at off grid properties back in the oughts and found nice place on 40 acres.
The community had run state water people off with firearms when they tried to inspect the community well.
They'd also abolished utility easements so no outside power or water lines could be run.
Might still be for sale.
The CHIPS Act is going well.
I thought bringing Taiwanese working conditions to the US would help.
(I can't find the full clip so you'll have to click right on the arrow a couple times.)
Important to note that this is Taiwanese culture, not Chinese; Taiwan is much more exacting in the finished product and generally much more attentive to human rights in terms of work culture, so it is not a direct correlation to what happened in the American Factory doc.
Which brings us to what I believe is the more salient point:
TSMC is very Christian and at least their top management likens their research, discoveries and manufacturing progress to faith-based divine revelation.
The symptoms of worker's rights abuse may not be simple disregard for labor rights so much as continued religious fervor.
https://www.wired.com/story/i-saw-the-face-of-god-in-a-tsmc-factory/
Their R&D is scientific, but their motivation, timelines and sheer effort is strongly faith-based, in the mindset that God has allowed them to get this far and will allow them to continue to progress no matter what technological hurdles appear.
Either way, labor rights have to be respected, but I wanted to point out that Taiwan and China are entirely separate countries with different work cultures and there's another pretty important reason why outside workers might be put off by the zealotry with which tsmc focuses on developing cutting edge chip manufacturing.
Taiwan is less than 4% Christian. I doubt workers in TSMC are significantly different.
E: 3.9%. source
TSMC specifically hires and promotes devout Christians for leadership positions and they say for all positions that Christian belief is important.
It's in the attached article.
TSMC chairman Mark Liu says that "Every scientist must beleieve in God" and about TSMC's work, "God means nature. We are describing the face of nature at TSMC".
u wot
It's not really true.
It stems from a couple of their chairmen being Christian and saying "I see god in nature" (something that I imagine all Christians do).
The above user then extrapolated that Taiwan is Christian (they're actually 3.9% Christian lol), that TSMC hires people based on religion, and that the reason TSMC is struggling with their US plant is because Taiwan is too Christian in culture for a 67% Christian country, as opposed to, oh I dunno, the discrepancy in working conditions between the US and Taiwan.