TSMC confirms dividend payout ratio cut to 10% to purchase green energy; employees outraged: Why should CSR be deducted from my pocket? Calls for unionization rise.

TSMC has confirmed that the employee profit-sharing allocation ratio has been reduced from approximately 12% to 10%. Chairman C.C. Wei cited ESG investments as the reason and promised that the total amount of profit-sharing would increase by 30%. However, the employees' sense of relative deprivation and their questioning of the distribution logic remain far from quelled. (Previous coverage: TSMC "rumored to cut profit-sharing," netizens blast management for taking the lion's share, calling for a "turn off phones after work" movement.) (Background: Taiwan stocks surged 1,200 points to hit a new high! MediaTek and Delta Electronics hit the daily limit, while TSMC rose by 55 NTD.) Collective complaints have emerged in online communities, with some calling to "learn from Samsung's strike" and others advocating to "form a labor union." The focus of their frustration is: With the company hitting record profits, why is the profit-sharing ratio shrinking? TSMC’s Q1 2026 financial report was impressive, with revenue up 35.1% YoY and EPS up 58.3% YoY, yet it has triggered a rare internal employee storm. As the topic fermented on the "TSMC Big and Small Matters" Facebook group, TSMC Chairman C.C. Wei hosted a company-wide video briefing yesterday (27th) and officially admitted that the company’s employee profit-sharing ratio for this year has been lowered from approximately 12% of the previous year's net profit after tax to 10%. Regarding the reason for the reduction, C.C. Wei explained that the cut portion is primarily being diverted into ESG sustainable resource investments, including the purchase of green electricity and coping with rising electricity costs, in order to fulfill corporate social responsibility. However, C.C. Wei emphasized that the reduction in the ratio has not led to a decline in the total amount. Benefiting from the significant profit growth in the previous year, the total amount of profit-sharing actually distributed to employees will still increase by about 30% compared to last year. TSMC's financial scale has expanded rapidly in recent years. Given the continuously expanding profit base, even if the allocation ratio is slightly reduced from 12% to 10%, if the company's annual net profit continues to rise, the total pool will still be larger than the previous year. C.C. Wei's promise of an "increase of over 30%" is built on this logic. However, the claim that "the total profit-sharing amount will increase by 30%" has not calmed the anger of some grassroots employees, because the core of the issue is not the numbers, but the meaning represented by the "profit-sharing ratio" itself. When employees work hard to achieve the stellar performance that sent the company's EPS soaring by 58%, only to see their own profit-sharing ratio shrink from 12% to 10%, that two-percentage-point gap can easily offset the 30% increase in the total amount. What makes it even harder for some employees to accept is the reason given by the company itself. C.C. Wei explained that the 2% reduction is mainly used for ESG sustainable resource investments, including green electricity purchases and corporate social responsibility projects to address rising electricity costs. The problem is: rising electricity costs are TSMC's operating expenses, and green electricity procurement is the company's brand and compliance obligation... Why should these expenditures be deducted from the employees' profit-sharing pockets? In the eyes of employees, ESG is the company's external image project. Shareholders enjoy the premium status of TSMC in the global supply chain, yet this expense is absorbed by the profit-sharing ratio of grassroots employees, which is naturally difficult to accept emotionally. Faced with dissatisfaction over the shrinking profit-sharing, more employees have upgraded from verbal complaints to advocating for organized action. A post appeared in the "TSMC Big and Small Matters" group today, where an anonymous senior employee publicly stated that they plan to start organizing a labor union next year and retire after spending a year getting the organization on track. They admitted that they have already achieved financial freedom and their pension is optional, so they are not worried about retaliation from HR. The post immediately sparked heated discussion within the group. In terms of public opinion, there are voices like: "TSMC engineers are already making hundreds of thousands, yet they are still complaining about profit-sharing; they are too thick-skinned." This reaction is understandable, but it commits a common logical fallacy: equating "already being well-paid" with "should not strive for more." The legitimacy of employees defending their own labor rights never depends on their current salary level. A worker earning 30,000 a month can protest unfair distribution,