TSMC stirs up union formation! Can 65,000 employees learn from Samsung's strike to "demand profit sharing"?

TSMC employees broke the news on the Facebook group "TSMC 大小事" that their bonuses were cut by 15%, with rank-and-file staff threatening to "follow the Samsung strike." Three days later, Chairman C.C. Wei held an internal briefing and announced that this year's bonuses would increase by over 30%, putting the incident to rest. However, the world's most profitable semiconductor company, with over 60,000 employees in Taiwan, has no labor union. (Previous coverage: TSMC confirms bonus ratio cut to 10% to purchase green energy; employees outraged: Why should corporate social responsibility be deducted from my pocket? Calls for a union rise) (Background supplement: I developed "the disease of feeling worse the better TSMC performs": The psychological torment of an engineer before resigning) Key Highlights - TSMC's Q1 profit rose 58% year-on-year to a record high, yet news of a 15% bonus cut sparked threats of a strike similar to Samsung's; three days later, C.C. Wei announced a 30% bonus increase, ending the dispute. - The Samsung union grew from its first strike in 2024 to 90,000 members by 2026 (70% coverage), planning an 18-day massive strike; a single day of striking reduced fab output by 18%. - Taiwan's Labor Union Act guarantees the right to form unions, but TSMC still has no enterprise union; scholars suggest pursuing a cross-enterprise "Semiconductor Engineer Professional Union" route. On the night of the 24th, the "TSMC 大小事" Facebook group exploded. Someone posted a screenshot claiming TSMC was cutting bonuses by 15%. Most of the hundreds of comments below were angry, a few were sarcastic, but one comment stood out. "Samsung can strike, why can't we?" Three days later, Chairman C.C. Wei canceled his business trip and held a face-to-face communication meeting at the Hsinchu headquarters at 10:00 AM on May 27. He stated that this year's bonus increase would exceed 30%, promised that the overall compensation for employees would be higher than last year, and opened an inquiry system for everyone to check their numbers. That same afternoon, the inquiry system went live; employees checked their amounts, closed their laptops, and continued working overtime. The bonus dissatisfaction incident was over. But the problem was not. In Q1 2026, TSMC's profit surged 58% year-on-year to a record high, ranking among the top companies in global market capitalization. The "protest weapon" for over 60,000 Taiwanese employees in this storm was a comment in an anonymous Facebook group. Not union negotiations, not collective bargaining, not a strike vote. In 2016, Morris Chang said in an interview with CommonWealth Magazine a quote that has been repeatedly cited: "Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, and Texas Instruments do not have unions, and I believe this is an important reason for their success." He believed that labor-management confrontation is bad for a company; good companies take care of their employees, and when employees and the company are of one mind, there is naturally no need for a union. This was not empty talk. In the 1970s, when Morris Chang was in charge of global semiconductor operations at Texas Instruments, a national union organization attempted to initiate an organizing vote at the Houston plant. The result was "very few workers in favor, far less than half." He never encountered a successful union organizing action in his life, and this experience became the foundation of his belief. In December 2022, at the TSMC Arizona plant tool-in ceremony, Biden stood on stage and said, "Unions are back." Morris Chang later remarked that he found the statement "a bit grating." Four years later, Google has a union (Alphabet Workers Union, established in 2021), Apple retail stores have unions (the first in Maryland in 2022), and even Amazon warehouses have them (JFK8 warehouse vote). Morris Chang's 2016 "list of successful companies without unions" is disappearing one by one. But TSMC is still on the list. In Seoul, a completely different story is unfolding. On June 7, 2024, Samsung Electronics employees launched the first strike since the company's founding—only one day, as a test. They struck again on July 8 of the same year, lasting until August 1. By May 2026, the National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) membership had