This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Well hopefully it fails and sells to a not terrible company.
TSMC is a massive company that makes a huge profit. Almost nobody else in the world can make 5nm chips (intel can but they already are setting up in Ohio).
AMD, Nvidia, and Apple would have to fail first
So what happens to Taiwanese manufacturing when their population collapses due to a super low birthrate. They right behind South Korea in lowest TFR.
It's happening all over the place. They're either going to have to lean heavily into automation (where possible), and/or accept mass immigration from parts of the world that continue to have a high birth rate – although as we're seeing in a lot of places, that can be a tough sell politically.
W for workers rights, L for US fab production
In Taiwan, TSMC is known for extremely rigorous working conditions, including 12-hour work days that extend into the weekends and calling employees into work in the middle of the night for emergencies. TSMC managers in Taiwan are also known to use harsh treatment and threaten workers with being fired for relatively minor failures.
I'll say this again: we need to seize the means of production.
Important to note that this is Taiwanese culture, not Chinese; Taiwan is much more exacting in the finished product and generally much more attentive to human rights in terms of work culture, so it is not a direct correlation to what happened in the American Factory doc.
Which brings us to what I believe is the more salient point:
TSMC is very Christian and at least their top management likens their research, discoveries and manufacturing progress to faith-based divine revelation.
The symptoms of worker's rights abuse may not be simple disregard for labor rights so much as continued religious fervor.
https://www.wired.com/story/i-saw-the-face-of-god-in-a-tsmc-factory/
Their R&D is scientific, but their motivation, timelines and sheer effort is strongly faith-based, in the mindset that God has allowed them to get this far and will allow them to continue to progress no matter what technological hurdles appear.
Either way, labor rights have to be respected, but I wanted to point out that Taiwan and China are entirely separate countries with different work cultures and there's another pretty important reason why outside workers might be put off by the zealotry with which tsmc focuses on developing cutting edge chip manufacturing.
Taiwan is less than 4% Christian. I doubt workers in TSMC are significantly different.
E: 3.9%. source
TSMC specifically hires and promotes devout Christians for leadership positions and they say for all positions that Christian belief is important.
It's in the attached article.
TSMC chairman Mark Liu says that "Every scientist must beleieve in God" and about TSMC's work, "God means nature. We are describing the face of nature at TSMC".
3.9%
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Taiwan
Buddhism is at 35.1%, Taoism at 33%, and atheism at 18.7%.
Needless to say, Christianity is not "Taiwanese culture". They're about as Christian as Germany is Islamic (3.7%).
This article says nothing other than that a few people in high up positions at TSMC are Christian. It doesn't say anything about pushing Christianity onto workers.
And yeah of course Christians say Christianity is important and that they see god in nature. They're Christians.
u wot
It's not really true.
It stems from a couple of their chairmen being Christian and saying "I see god in nature" (something that I imagine all Christians do).
The above user then extrapolated that Taiwan is Christian (they're actually 3.9% Christian lol), that TSMC hires people based on religion, and that the reason TSMC is struggling with their US plant is because Taiwan is too Christian in culture for a 67% Christian country, as opposed to, oh I dunno, the discrepancy in working conditions between the US and Taiwan.
The CHIPS Act is going well.
