Micron Technology (MU) opened its second advanced assembly and test plant in Taiwan on Thursday, October 15, and said the site has nothing left to sell for 2027. The Taichung facility, called AATT2, packages and tests high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the chips that sit next to AI processors. President and COO Manish Bhatia said its entire planned 2027 capacity is already sold out.
The ribbon-cutting came with a warning attached. Taiwan President Lai Ching-te used the event to urge Micron and its workers to negotiate sincerely ahead of a possible strike over bonuses. No strike has started.
Micron’s Strike Risk Sits in Taichung
Sold out means customers have already claimed AATT2’s planned 2027 output, so a walkout there could disrupt committed shipments. How much would depend on the strike’s scale and duration, and on Micron’s contingency measures.
- The Taoyuan union announced its strike authorization on October 7, after voting from October 1 to 6, and has floated a surprise walkout (no date set).
- The bigger Taichung union, with about 11,000 members among 12,300 employees, hasn’t voted yet. It returns to mediation on October 22.
- AATT2 sits in Taichung.
What the Union Wants From Micron
The unions want profit-sharing tied to 15% of Micron’s operating profit. Their timing is no accident. Micron’s operating income jumped to $99.34 billion in fiscal 2026 (ended September 3), roughly 10 times the $9.77 billion it earned a year earlier.
Fifteen percent of that is about $15 billion a year. Samsung (005930.KS) settled its own strike threat in May with a bonus pool worth 10.5% of its chip division’s operating profit. The same rate at Micron would be about $10 billion.
The surge shows up quarter by quarter, too. Revenue climbed from $11.32 billion in the quarter ended August 2025 to $54.23 billion in the quarter ended September 2026, nearly five times higher.
That’s the leverage.
Why October 22 Matters for Micron
Micron can afford a deal. Even a 15% payout would leave it about $84 billion of last year’s operating profit. A prolonged walkout at AATT2 would put committed HBM deliveries at risk, though that needs Taichung’s talks to fail first. How much it would cost, and whether any orders would drift to rivals such as SK Hynix (000660), is still an open question.
Another one-off bonus probably won’t settle this. Micron already offered Taiwan staff up to 68 months of pay for fiscal 2026, and the Taoyuan union rejected it because it wanted a permanent profit-sharing system. October 22 is the date that counts: if Taichung’s mediation fails, Micron’s largest Taiwan union can move to its own strike vote.
Want to see how fast Micron’s profits have grown, quarter by quarter? Pull up the same revenue and operating income charts on TIKR for free, and check how Wall Street’s estimates have moved since the HBM boom started. Learn more here.
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