Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), one of the world’s largest makers of advanced chips, continues to find its efforts to get its Arizona plant up and running more tough than it had anticipated. The chipmaker’s 5nm wafer fab was supposed to come online in 2024 but has hit a series of snags and is now not expected to begin production until 2025. The semiconductor company’s problems boil down to a key difference between Taiwan and the U.S.: work culture. New York Times report emphasizes the constant struggle.
One major problem is that TSMC tries to do things the Taiwanese way, even in the U.S. In Taiwan, TSMC is known for its extremely exacting working conditions, including 12-hour days that extend into weekends and calling workers in at night in emergencies. TSMC managers in Taiwan are also known for brutalizing and threatening workers with termination for relatively minor infractions.
TSMC quickly learned that such practices wouldn’t work in the U.S. Recent reports indicate that the company’s Arizona workers are leaving the modern plant because of these alleged abuses, and TSMC is having trouble filling those vacancies. TSMC already relies heavily on workers brought in from Taiwan, and nearly half of its current 2,200 employees in Phoenix are Taiwanese transplants.
Starting chip production in Arizona was seen as one way to boost U.S. production of advanced chips and reduce reliance on imports from Taiwan. Given the rising tensions between the United States, China and Taiwan, this is seen as critical. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo says the country buys 92 percent of its cutting-edge processors from Taiwan.
TSMC has allocated $65 billion for this project, New York Times In addition, the facility received a $6.6 billion grant from the U.S. government under the CHIPS and Science Act.
The plan is to create 6,000 jobs while TSMC builds out the rest of the facility. Eventually, TSMC will have three different factories on its Phoenix campus, and it desperately wants to reduce the ratio of Taiwanese immigrants to local workers.
“We want this site to be a successful and sustainable place,” said Richard Liu, Arizona’s director of communications and employee relations. “Sustainable means we can’t rely on Taiwan to send people here.”
In response to the growth in engineering positions at TSMC and elsewhere, nearby colleges and universities have been ramping up their programs in fields such as electrical engineering. TSMC has partnered with many of these programs, offering internships, research projects and job fairs. It also works with technical colleges and high schools to build spotless rooms, the heart of semiconductor manufacturing, to give students exposure to the environments.
To facilitate deal with the cultural conflict, TSMC is sending U.S. workers to Taiwan to observe the Taiwanese way of life. At the same time, the chipmaker is conducting communication training for its managers to facilitate them work better with U.S. workers.
If TSMC is to succeed in its Arizona chipmaking venture, it must come to terms with the fact that it is not the only company in town. While TSMC is considered by many in Taiwan to be the pinnacle of engineering jobs, other companies in Arizona are competing for that pool of workers. Intel, in particular, is expanding its Arizona chip plant.
