Half of TSMC's Arizona staff are Taiwanese, despite recent controversies

(Image credit: Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

After TSMC began building Fab 21 near Phoenix, Arizona, the company said it needed to dispatch more than 1,000 skilled workers from Taiwan so it could complete the project on time and within budget. This made Arizona unions furious, as they argued it essentially took positions from locals, and the situation even spurred a separate lawsuit for racial discrimination. Today, about 50% of the staff at the fab still originate from Taiwan, but this will change over time as TSMC builds out additional phases of its factory, reports the New York Times.

About half of the 2,200 employees at TSMC's Fab 21 in Arizona come from Taiwan. When announcing the project in 2020, TSMC assured the public it would create jobs for locals, so bringing over 1,000 employees from Taiwan contradicts the foundry's promise to hire talent from Arizona, which naturally angered unions.

TSMC reportedly also had working policies that contradict those in the U.S. Over time, it turned out that TSMC called for employees to work for extended hours, which is not common in the U.S. Over time, TSMC has also been accused of preferring Taiwanese employees for promotion in a lawsuit.

However, TSMC expects the percentage of American workers to grow as it builds additional phases of its Fab 21 over the next five years. This will likely happen as TSMC's existing employees learn more about the company's operations and get promoted while others are hired. The three-phase project is projected to create around 6,000 well-paid jobs.

What remains to be seen is who will equip these subsequent phases of Fab 21: existing site employees or new employees from Taiwan. TSMC's Fab 21 phase 2 will focus on producing chips using its N3 (3nm-class) process technologies. In contrast, Fab 21 phase 3 will add N2 (2nm-class) and A16 (1.6nm-class) technologies and their versions with backside power delivery and performance and transistor density enhancements to the site.

However, N3, N2, and A16 use slightly different tools than the N4 and N5 production nodes used at Fab 21 phase 1. As a result, TSMC may be inclined to bring more workers from Taiwan to install these tools and help with the fab ramp, as they will have unique experience that people in the U.S. will not have.

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

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17 Comments Comment from the forums

kjfatl

It is no surprise that the majority of workers are Taiwanese. TSMC, following Taiwanese government policy will continue to develop it's technology at its hub in Taiwan, then deploy its older technology in fabs in other nations. If we want leading edge industry of any type in this country, we need laws to encourage it.

For TSMC in the US, the management and lead engineers will most likely always be Taiwanese.
You will see a similar thing with Samsung and Korean employees.
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coder0xff

And they have created jobs for locals, haven't they? 50% even. That this is even controversial is moronic. Of course a large portion of the initial positions are internal transfers.
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Alvar "Miles" Udell

Well yeah, as the article states they tried to run it like a Taiwanese fab and Americans rebelled, work culture in the USA is not the same as in Taiwan. It's like the horror stories you hear about workers in South Korea or Japan putting in 70+ hour weeks and working off the clock because it's their culture.

Also, as I stated in a comment for another article on TSMC Arizona, Taiwan is extremely compact compared to the USA, it's only 15% the size of Arizona itself, so the labor base is extremely concentrated and moving around the island isn't a huge deal. Compare that with convincing people in the USA to uproot themselves from potentially established lives and decent jobs and move hundreds or thousands of miles away to Arizona, compounded by the fact mortgage rates and rental prices are sky high, and if the job falls through it's not like Samsung or TI is begging for fab workers.
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craigphicks

Let them bring over who they want but not on h1b visas. Then those Taiwanese will be available for hire by any US company, and they won't pull wages down.
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phead128

Vivek was right about importing foreign talent to compete against China.
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systemBuilder_49

Morris Chang had a lot of help from America and Americans in getting TSMC off the ground. Lets all work yogether to figure out why American VLSI yields were traditionally lower than Taiwanese. To think its something intrinsic is highly racist thought ....

Morris Chang became highly successful at TI which had a 50+ hour a week work culture (some employees had cots in their office!). So it can happen again in the USA ...

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/morris-chang-and-the-origins-of-tsmc
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palladin9479

If people read back into the history we can see what happened. Once they agreed to start operations and start hiring workers, they all formed a union and started holding the project ransom. It got further and further behind, TSMC brought in their own management and that's when the "extended hours" started being asked to get things caught up. The union refused and construction was getting farther behind so then TSMC did the paperwork and brought in 1,000 Taiwanese workers to get it back on track, and they did. Unions and union internal politics have no power over those workers, none of this "don't work too hard your making the rest of us look bad" nonsense.

TSMC has a ridiculously good case to justify it's actions as everything is documented. Project was behind schedule with 100% American union workers, Project got back on schedule after bringing in, and paying, 50% Taiwanese non-union workers. Those workers put in extra hours to get the project back on track, and were not only compensated for it but will be remembered when it comes time for promotion.

As for East Asia, I lived there for over a decade, it's a very different place. Most of the people have a strong "work hard, play hard" mentality that is backed by large amounts of socially acceptable shame. People really care about what others think and do not want to be thought of as "lazy" or "not diligent". They put in crazy hours sometimes, but then afterward have tons of fun. Taiwan, Japan and South Kora are safe, clean and modern places to live. My wife doesn't want us staying in the US forever, we'll be going back to her home country once our retirement is big enough and I'm ready to transition to part-time remote consulting work.
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thestryker

Alvar Miles Udell said:
Well yeah, as the article states they tried to run it like a Taiwanese fab and Americans rebelled, work culture in the USA is not the same as in Taiwan. It's like the horror stories you hear about workers in South Korea or Japan putting in 70+ hour weeks and working off the clock because it's their culture.

Also, as I stated in a comment for another article on TSMC Arizona, Taiwan is extremely compact compared to the USA, it's only 15% the size of Arizona itself, so the labor base is extremely concentrated and moving around the island isn't a huge deal. Compare that with convincing people in the USA to uproot themselves from potentially established lives and decent jobs and move hundreds or thousands of miles away to Arizona, compounded by the fact mortgage rates and rental prices are sky high, and if the job falls through it's not like Samsung or TI is begging for fab workers.
You can also add in Intel being relatively next door who was expanding the AZ fab, paying better and having better working conditions. Anyone in that industry willing to move to AZ had a better choice of whom to work for.
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OneMoreUser

How is half the people at TSMC AZ being from Taiwan unusual like suggested in the article?

In fact I'd say it is surprising it is only half the people there, since FAB workers are not hanging out on street corners anywhere. But maybe TH can provide some examples on how the usual is?
In fact I'd say TH do bring some examples and prove this is not another article with unsubstantiated claims, a sort of usual for TH.
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rluker5

OneMoreUser said:

In fact I'd say it is surprising it is only half the people there, since FAB workers are not hanging out on street corners anywhere.

That's probably why they set up so close to Intel.
But were probably a less desirable place to work because of conditions so maybe not as many wanted to switch as they had hoped.

Also I would have thought that having a certain % of American workers would have been a prerequisite for the chips act. But maybe the legislators didn't think of that.
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