TSMC’s Taiwan Contractors “Not Used” To Working In U.S. Say Arizona Workers

30.08.2023 - 12:27 / wccftech.com

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Controversy surrounding the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) new American chipmaking plant is refusing to die down. TSMC, much to everyone's surprise, revealed earlier this year that its chip manufacturing plant in the U.S. will be delayed by a year. The firm's stated reason behind the delay is a lack of skilled workers in Arizona, and it intends to fly out workers from Taiwan to install high end machines at the site. However, a fresh report from The Guardian sheds more light on the labor problems at the Arizona chip site after interviewing workers who lay some of the blame on Taiwanese managers being unable to adhere to safety regulations.

TSMC's U.S. chip plant is central to the industry's efforts at diversifying the semiconductor supply chain away from Taiwan. The firm is only one of two companies in the world that make advanced chips for other companies, and the Arizona plant is the result of a years-long effort by the U.S. government to establish a local supply chain independent of geopolitical conflicts. Taiwan's proximity to China and the political tensions between the two have generated concerns about the safety of TSMC's Taiwanese plants and their importance to both civilian and defense-related semiconductor procurements.

However, after TSMC announced in its second quarter earnings that the Arizona chip plant will be delayed due to labor constraints, local worker unions have protested strongly against the stated reason for the delay. Friction between the U.S. and China and any delays to the Arizona site indirectly benefit China since it leaves America's economy vulnerable to any potential conflict in Taiwan.

A fresh report from The Guardian interviews former workers at the Arizona site and they claim several hurdles in building the advanced chip manufacturing facility. These range from confusing work tasks, a lax safety culture and concerning attitudes towards local workers.

The Guardian, quoting one worker, shares:

“When you have to put stuff up, tear it down, put it up, tear it down, literally five or six times, that’s going to cost five or six times the original quote, probably more because you have to get demolitions involved,” the worker said. “This was constantly the whole process. Everything was rushed. They weren’t giving us actual blueprints, just engineer drawings. It felt like a design-as-we-go type of deal. The information we were getting was really strange, never complete, and always changing. We would get updates constantly and these were big updates to the point where we would have to start pulling things down.”

The worker also