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.
Korean worker finally got beat down enough to fight back?
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.
Also things like selling their loss leaders below purchase price. The kicker is that they still lost the price war they started even though the German discounters kept things legal.
Then there was something about not wanting to publish their balance sheets as they’re required to, shutting out the works council from stuff that the works council has a right to be involved in, the list is endless. Not only did they not have a German CEO to manage all that stuff they apparently didn’t even have German lawyers.
No German lawyers ? The amount of stupidity and arrogance is mind blowing
And Walmart trying to control worker’s private lifes by forbidding sexual relationships between workers.
Just why would they do that? And were that their concern, wouldn’t such people work better, not worse?
I guess the rational is that a breakup would lead to worse job performance.
Well, that’s quite strange math, the amount of breakups between Walmart employees is expected to be less that the amount of relationships. Facts from the former are mostly a subset of facts from the latter actually.
Unless we consider the possibility that couples come to work at Walmart and break up there, but couples rarely form while already there.
Justification I’ve heard is that if one part of the couple is managing the other, or is promoted after the relationship started, then:
- there is a power imbalance in the couple, possibly one is coercing the other (« I can’t leave him/her, they’ll make my worklife hell / get me fired »);
- there is a risk the manager will promote their partner even if their job performance doesn’t warrant it
Companies will want to both avoid this sort of things, and avoid being seen to enable this sort of things. They might want to move one of the parties to a different department so that the higher up one doesn’t make promotion decisions for the other.
I’ve once worked at a company that wanted to know about relationships between their employees and suppliers/customers’ employees, again because that might enable situations where a supplier / customer is treater favourably because of personal relationships
By law: 8 hours as the rule, never more than 10 hours for exceptions.
By contract, they can go a little above the 8 hours.
If they go above the 10, it can cost the company a lot even for a single case.
So they didn’t plan even for such simple things. Wow.
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.
You’d be surprised to hear about Japanese & Korean work culture.
Yeah… korea, Japan, Taiwan, China
Japan is slowly getting better, but it’s a long road ahead. There are more laws and they’re actually enforcing some of them with regard to harassment and hours worked (a lot of people would clock out and keep working, but they’re trying to make the penalties bit enough to stop it from what I hear. My company is certainly strict about it).
It’d be nice to have european-level vacations before I retire, but that I don’t see happening
Central/Eastern Europe somewhat does.
Also, I don’t like how in much of Europe for many jobs you can’t quit at will, you legally have to give notice (and sometimes not a short one).
At will employment is horse shit. A notice period on a month or 2 months is fine… you agree up front so you know. And your next employer counts this in when hiring. And mostly you have some vacation days you can take to shorten it a bit.
In the Netherlands a determined contract of a year has no “out” other than an agreement between the 2 parties… otherwise you serve it in full. Which is what you agree to when starting it.
Agreeing to it doesn’t mean I like it…
Trapping people in terrible jobs sucks. Especially when it’s considered the legal standard and your contract has to state it’s at will(which might be illegal in some places)
Such a weird take.
A month is easily survivable, the snowball of Beiing fired on the spot, having no income, not being able to afford your living expenses, debts, homelessness is not.
At will employment might be good for a view niche jobs, for most jobs especially the lower paid, it just gives the employer even more power over their employees.
I’d suggest you take your weird american viewpoint on employment and go away. We like the fact that employees get proper protections against predatory corpos.
A month is easily survivable
Depends on the job/employer.
Furthermore it’s more important when things come up. Say you need to go take care of a relative in an emergency.
Yeah, let’s make all regulations up based on exceptions and edgecases.
If something happens and you need space, most EU countries have leave for that, you can also take vacation days (we also get those by law)… or your employer allows you to go.
Again, strange corpo way of trying to normalize not having proper contracts and labor protections. You have bought in to the propaganda too much.
Probably anti union too, no?
It goes both ways, your employer can’t fire you at will either. But it goes further, usually you have a probation period, in Germany it’s up to 6 months during which you can leave any time, or be fired at any time. Beyond that there’s always the option to agree on a shorter notice period, but if you’re getting fired and you agree to a shorter period you won’t get unemployment compensation for that time.
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
Funny thing is, TSMC in Taiwan is considered a premium employer. It offers much better pay and parks than other companies.
Parks?
Perks
Now we don’t know they don’t have kick-ass parks.
You can’t say that, having a park at work is a hell of a perk.
Getting parks as perks sounds great to me.
Science park expansion ratified: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2023/12/27/2003811196
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
Well, it’s bad from a western POV.
It’s doubly bad because Asian countries are significantly more productive due to extremely long working hours.
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.
Agreed.
I think progressive policies replacing existing conservative (incl. neoliberal) policies would go a long way to combat corporatocracy and kleptocracy.
It may not solve everything, but it might at least put some goddamn limits in place until we can find ways to overcome human greed.
This was a bipartisan screw up, Biden after all led the initiative
Where do you think our cops are going to come from when China invades Taiwan? This was necessary.
Then don’t blame the Republican governor xd. That’s my point.
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.
Similar stuff happened with US companies in the EU.
That stuff even happens with UK companies taking over German companies. They think they can just fire the members of the working council, very bad mistake! Remember, if you go to another country, you have to adjust to their law.
if you go to another country, you have to adjust to their law
Big business knows no national boundaries. They’ll build factories wherever labor is cheap, put headquarters wherever the taxes are low, and sell their wares wherever consumer rights are weak.
Yes, there is an irony that it’s typically the anti-capitalist left and the hyper-capitalist corporate right that are most supportive of open-border policies.
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)
Sounds like they need a union
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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
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…
Production is pretty easy to understaff. It’s not like an operator stands at the tool the entire time - much of the job is moving wafer cassettes from one tool to another and basically hitting “go”, then the tool runs its process in its own. Other tasks involve restocking depleted chemicals and retrieving reticles, but the main thrust of the production job type is moving things from one place to another so the tools can do their job.
Given it’s a 12.5 hour shift in a bunny suit that involves a lot of standing and walking, it’s important that employees have a certain amount of downtime during their shift, just a few minutes here and there outside of breaks and lunches where they can relax. If you run too lean, staff has to constantly scurry from tool to tool and they’ll quickly burn out. This is the TSMC way.
There’s also a lot more to a fab than its production staff. Engineers, facilities, waste water treatment, chemical handling, IT, EHS, and various administrative roles are all very easy to understaff since many positions are salaried and TSMC loves that unpaid overtime. The results roll downhill to production staff not getting the support they need, further compounding the pressure they feel.
Those are all very good points and guess what I just got called into work funnily enough!
Boooo weekend work. Sorry to hear it but good luck escaping.
There’s also just completely failing to account for callouts in planning, which I saw a lot of when I was a manufacturing supervisor. Upper management breathes down operations’ neck to only have people doing the most high cost function they’re being paid for as much of the time as possible. If someone has been trained to run a line, they don’t want to see them doing 5S upkeep or sweeping, they want them running that line the whole shift. Unfortunately, this extends from the most senior positions down to the new hires, so they schedule the fewest people for each role they possibly could safely operate with when they come up with their production plan. Quite predictably, with humans not being robots, this throws the whole thing into chaos the moment one person calls out. Upper management gets into a tizzy about schedule attainment numbers while demanding to know how this could possibly happen, only to sit down with planning and pull the same bullshit with the following week’s schedule.
If you have a couple of redundancies in your scheduling, you can just postpone lower priority tasks and roll with it. If everyone shows up, you can have people work on stuff like training, preventative maintenance, house keeping, and a million other things.
For reasons apparently only getting an MBA will lower your IQ enough to seem reasonable, upper management in manufacturing loves doing those skeleton crews where a single absence means mandatory OT and 6-7 dry work weeks to try and salvage what can be of the production schedule, while demanding to know why we struggle to get and maintain staff for these roles.
It’s just greed and stupidity, plain and simple. Your points are spot on and are amongst the many reasons I suggest people in our field should avoid TSMC. I’d take a job at Intel over TSMC and that’s saying a lot
If you dint have more people than are necessary to run the business you’re understaffed. People get sick, have a flat tire, go on vacation, retire, and unexpectedly die.
If you can’t operate at 100% capacity while down a few employees then you’re guaranteed to underperform.
*you’re
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.
My friend, I can’t even manage an eight hour day without extreme burnout. I know I’m not necessarily in the majority there, but hearing you say 12 could ever possibly be comfortable just sounds like nonsense to me
I’m burnt out and don’t want to do fun stuff anyway after 8, why not do 12 and have entire extra days of not burning myself out. I miss my 12 hour 3x weekly nights schedule, I’d go back to it in a heartbeat.
I would stop going to that job. This would not have be a choice that I made, it is simply a thing that would occur. This would be bad for me.
Free time is tight before and after shift so it’s all about preparation. Clothes are out the night before, meals are prepped before work week starts etc. It’s also important to have a short commute. I’m close and go home on lunch break for an hour to eat and walk the dog.
Some days are real busy but fly by fast. I’m super beat after those. Most I’m more “on call” and just fix problems as they come. I get to work on projects I want to in the down time, or even just chill knowing a big problem is around the corner. IDK hard to explain but it’s worth it for the time off. I think my ideal would be for 10s every week.
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
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!
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
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.
That’s the nature of capitalism.
Look at healthcare, software, construction. Unless there’s a very clear incentive to produce high quality (laws or enforceable contracts) things will go lower and lower in quality.
And unfortunately, a lot of consumers don’t care all that much about quality. They want crap that looks fancy.
This last job (I’m a contract employee) will be my last in MFG. I was hired long term (2 years) to get a gsk/haleon site to add almost 40% more deliverables. 280 million units a year to 400 million. Reduce waste by 25%, CoA/CoE turn around down to 2 weeks from 6.
The labs, which operate almost entirely as a community (eg no real rigid structure, lots of senior empires) killed it. 7 day turn around which honestly now my mind. Packaging was a struggle once i pointed out that OEE can be improved by scheduling downtime rather than just oopsing it (strictly beancounter bullshit).
Manufacturing… Took my ideas, literally threw them in the trash in front of me and said they have experts from multiple countries, they don’t need my help. Cool, i still get paid so whatever. You wanna see the biggest dumpster fire ever… Laid off about 40% of the mfg work force, rolled out some bullshit trainings about operators and maintenance working to bring equipment “back to new” whatever the duck that means (means maintenance budget is gone) all while investing 0 dollars into repair and maintenance. Gear boxes leaking oil into overflowing catch cans for months. Vacuum traps actually pulling ingredients out of the batches, building more systems upon systems that they can’t validate. Cleans that won’t pass swabs, cleans that aren’t validated, processes that rely 100% on operators to transcribe SCADA data into an electronic batch record system.
Never seen anything like it but i know when a horse is dead and this one was dead before i got there.
As a software engineer, this is exactly how software works.
Everything is just a huge mess bolted and duct taped together, sometimes over decades. And it’s all way too complex to understand and crap like crowdstrike happens.
You can’t rely on anything anymore and I’m pretty sure, our highly interdependent world will come very close to collapse if anything major happens. Covid was a warning shot, but nobody heard it.
I don’t think there will be a collapse just because there is no meticulous maintenance or development. Most likely, in the future there will just be an accident or tragedy that will improve standards and safety.
If you want a collapse you have to pray that all the factors attack at the same time, because if only one does the attack they only strengthen humanity see Late Bronze Age collapse.
Look at crowdstrike. A tiny error disabled millions of computers for hours. Think about what would have happened, if this wouldn’t have been an error, but an actual attack.
Look at the supply chains of medical supplies. One major outbreak of some bacterial disease in India or China will lead to them stopping exports and since so many pills are produced there, a huge drop in global supply.
Look at the undersea cables. There are not that many and capable malicious actor could easily destroy a lot of them.
Look at the power grid. I don’t know about other parts of the world, but the European grid, spanning pretty much all countries in Europe plus turkey, has no plan for a cold start. If it breaks down, there’s gonna be blackouts for weeks.
Of course, none of that will end society, but that’s not how collapses work anyway. One event triggers another, and the combination leads to the collapse itself.
Remove meticulous. I’m watching 15 year old equipment fail on a daily and the solution is to keep running it. Failing to plan is planning to fail no matter what mental gymnastics you pay a consulting firm to do for you after your layoff 10% of your open office mouth breathers and 50% of your neck down workers.
Businesses seem to have really gotten caught buying their own bullshit. If the numbers are so good and your OEE is so good, you don’t need that labor overhead. So they reduce the headcount. Problem is the numbers are all made up and someone whose ass was in the fire is now maybe safe for another few months. Multiply that by a few other “engineers” or whatever intern they pawned serious work off onto and you get a lemon.
I’ve been doing this a very long time and I’ve seen business struggle for all sorts of reasons. No one’s trying to steer the cart away from the cliff anymore. Why admit fault and get laid off when you can bullshit and get laid off? That’s worst case. Bullshit and keep your job? Gravy.
It’s the nature of both market economies and planned economies. Strong unions are needed in both.
