Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) reached a Taiwan union agreement with the Taichung union on 21 October 2026, the company said, averting a mediation session that had been scheduled for the following day.
The deal covers only part of Micron’s roughly 15,000-strong Taiwan workforce. A separate, larger union at Micron’s Taoyuan site, whose members voted 1,994 to 14 to authorise industrial action, walked out the same day.
Two unions, one Taiwan strike
Micron operates two independently organised unions in Taiwan, at Taichung and Taoyuan. Only the Taichung side settled. The Taoyuan union went on strike the day the Taichung deal was announced, raising the stakes at one of Micron’s most important manufacturing hubs.
Taoyuan’s dispute centres on a demand for 15% of operating profit paid out as bonuses. According to Digitimes, the union wants a concrete commitment on the percentage and amount of a one-off 2026 payout, citing rival chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix as benchmarks.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Labor has urged Micron to table a workable proposal and said it would coordinate with local authorities on the dispute, Tokenpost reported.
Samsung’s precedent sets the bar
The Taoyuan union’s 15% ask sits above the settlement Samsung reached with its own union in May 2026, when a bonus pool worth 10.5% of chip-division operating profit persuaded workers to call off a planned strike. Taiwan accounted for a majority of Micron’s DRAM output in 2025, making labour stability there a closely watched variable for AI-server memory pricing, Yahoo Finance noted.
Record profits sharpen the bonus fight
The profit-share dispute lands as Micron’s earnings surge. The company reported fiscal 2026 GAAP net income of $84.97bn, or $74.33 per diluted share, on revenue of $133.19bn for the full year. Quarterly filings show how fast that trajectory accelerated: fiscal third-quarter 2026 revenue hit $41.46bn, with net income of $28.24bn and diluted earnings of $24.67 a share, up from $23.86bn in revenue and $13.79bn in net income the prior quarter. Two years earlier, in fiscal second-quarter 2024, Micron reported revenue of just $5.82bn and net income of $793m, underlining the scale of the memory-market recovery that has fed worker demands for a bigger share of the upside.
Shares in Micron last traded at $925.00, up 1.54% over 24 hours but down 13.47% over the prior 20 trading sessions, against a 20-day range of $869.39 to $1,113.44, according to consolidated US exchange data cited by Reuters. Trading volume ran at 57% of its 20-day average.
Filings show insider selling, unrelated to dispute
A Form 4 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on 20 October 2026 shows Micron insider Scott J. DeBoer disposing of shares under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted on 17 July 2026, predating the union dispute and unconnected to it.
The broader rate backdrop has also been a factor for chip-sector valuations. The 10-year US Treasury yield stood at 5.15% on 19 October 2026, up from 5.09% the prior session, according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data, while the 2-year yield held at 4.77%, leaving the 10y-2y spread at 0.33 percentage points.
Micron has not set a date for renewed talks with the Taoyuan union. Taiwan’s labour ministry has signalled it will keep pressing both sides for a resolution, leaving the question of how much of its record profit Micron shares with its Taiwan workforce still open.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Markets move quickly; figures are correct as sourced at the time of writing. Always do your own research before making financial decisions.
