Micron Freezes Its $4.5 Billion Taiwan HBM Fab as a Pay Fight Escalates
Bloomberg reported that Micron has all but halted construction of Fab 11E in Taoyuan, a $3-4.5 billion HBM and DRAM plant due in 2028, after failing to settle a profit-sharing demand with its Taoyuan union.
Micron has effectively stopped building the plant that was supposed to carry its HBM expansion into 2028. Fab 11E in Taoyuan, budgeted at $3 billion to $4.5 billion including ASML lithography tools, has been reduced to safety work, and the company has told Taiwanese officials and at least one supplier that construction is suspended, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 5. Only minor work remains before the site is frozen. Micron said Taiwanese operations are running normally but did not address the fab.
The dispute is over a formula, not a raise. Micron settled with its larger Taichung union on Oct. 21, lifting junior engineers' average annual package above NT$4 million, about $121,450, and senior packages to NT$6 million, but the Taoyuan union is demanding that 15% of operating profit be shared with employees worldwide in cash, citing Samsung and SK hynix. It won 99% backing in an October strike-authorisation vote, held a one-day walkout on Oct. 22 and went into a third round of mediation on Nov. 6.
Micron's own numbers explain the standoff. The company reported fiscal 2026 revenue of $133.2 billion and operating income of $99.3 billion, so a 15% pool would come to roughly $15 billion a year, three to five times the entire cost of the fab, and the formula would travel to staff in the US, Japan and Singapore. Taiwan produces about 60% of Micron's DRAM and a large share of its HBM, with 15,000 employees and NT$1.6 trillion invested over three decades.
The freeze lands on a market with no slack. DRAM spot prices on Nov. 3 stood at $61.50 for DDR5 16Gb and $82.719 for DDR4 16Gb, PC DRAM contracts are rising 13-18% this quarter, and Micron has said most of its 2027 HBM output is already sold. Consumer NAND is the exception, with Market Pulse Scope's eMMC benchmarks down 9.7% in a week on the 128GB part, which is why the memory complex is splitting into a sold-out contract market and a soft channel market.