31
votes
TSMC blames struggle to build Phoenix plant on skilled labor shortage but workers cite disorganization and safety concerns
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- Title
- 'They would not listen to us': inside Biden's troubled $53bn chip plant
- Authors
- Michael Sainato
- Published
- Aug 28 2023
- Word count
- 1908 words
From the article:
Is it really wise to continue building it there? From what I remember reading about Arizona, their water sources are drying up. I know Intel recycles their water in Arizona and are predicting to have net-positive water use by 2030, but I'm sure it'll take TSMC more time for that, and further exacerbate the problem.
Edit: Since the issue in this article is stemming from inadequate training.
The only solution seems to be more inspections and training for the Taiwanese employees.
Arizona benefits from supply chain economies of scale; you already have several fabs there, so there’s a workforce who has experience, local governments which have interfaced with semiconductor companies before, and smaller suppliers of industrial and specialized equipment (including optical devices from nearby Tucson). Additionally, it remains a reasonably short distance away from Silicon Valley, and the Port of Long Beach, and has seasonal charter flights to Taipei.
Other then the heat, which is not insignificant, Phoenix has the advantage of being in a location with no natural disaster issues. Maybe some flooding but flooding isn't really a city issue and more a roads issue. No earthquakes, no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no fires, no tidal waves, etc. The heat is definitely a problem but it's a predictable one. So it's understandable why companies are determined to figure out how to make it work.
And at the end of the day if you need water you can tuck it in. Sure it won't be cheap, but given they use it for making microchips I'm sure they have the profit margins
Honestly, and I don't mean to come across as any sort of xenophobic, if you're building a conductor plant and can't staff it with local talent you're not shoring up domestic production.
With the end goal being able to locally manufacturer chips, all of the visas or are least most of them should be rejected and the company should just raise incentives. Even if the government plans to subsidize that as part of the plan, it should be majority domestic production.
Not to say these applicants are in any way untrustworthy but it just seems really counter intuitive.
IMO if the US government is kicking in a large amount of funding then using American labour whenever possible seems like a reasonable demand.
It’s not ideal, but I still think building a factory with foreign expertise is better than not building it.
If you have a factory you couldn’t build without outside expertise, you can still keep making chips using it. The problem is building another factory. It’s not full independence, but it’s not as bad as importing the chips, where supply gets cut off immediately if there’s some kind of supply problem or a new trade barrier.
Full independence is a really high bar that few industries could achieve in a globally interconnected world, but there are ways to add resilience.
The question for me, with all Visa applications usually, is "is there a need for the worker or a need for the worker at the wages you want to pay?"
Judging that the article highlights concerns of worker safety, I don't want the answer to be "Build it with unsafe labor or don't build it at all." If you're gonna play ball in America, you have to deal with OSHA. Starting off the build by breaking those regulations doesn't bode well for long term success.
It's unlikely that TSMC is trying to cheap out on labor. The labor is probably the cheap part of a $40bn+ plant. A superb article is I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory. It details fundamental culture clashes between Taiwanese and American workforces. A state-of-the-art semiconductor is run 24-7 like the military: it requires a supremely disciplined workforce that will obey and execute tasks with precision. Americans have a reputation for being relaxed, improvisational, and eager to challenge authority.
I'm from a Taiwanese computer science family. It checks out to me. Whether it's fair or unfair, there's a sort of prevailing opinion that while Americans are creative and innovative, they are undisciplined, easily distracted and need to be entertained, and lack the ability to chi ku, or eat bitterness — to suffer, persevere, and stay the course.
Having trained multinational teams from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, I'm quite aware of the various differences in cultural expectations of learning and attitudes.
I don't necessarily disagree with the premise of your statement, after all it's been said since Von Stueben trained the Continental Army that Americans say "why?" when you tell them to jump, but the end of your quote goes to the point that I was trying to avoid, that being the Taiwanese engineers saying that lazy Americans will probably steal their secrets for Intel.
Just because they've built a system that works really well for their culture, not saying anything negative or positive about that system or culture, doesn't mean that it's the only way to do things and that it's the best way.
When training people from other cultures, you've got to meet them halfway. You bring the knowledge and the systems and they bring workforce. You help their workforce adapt to those systems and make them your own. I'm sure there are Americans who are absolutely as diligent and focused as their Taiwanese counterparts but I'm sure they also command an American wage equivalent of that dedication.
I think those are good questions but I don’t think we have enough info to take sides. Investigating enough to figure out what’s really going on would probably be pretty technical.
The journalist did some investigation, but apparently not enough to get to the bottom of it, so they gave both sides.
I don't know if it's just my perception as an Eastern European, but I don't think this would come across as xenophobic in any possible interpretation. Our [i.e. my] current government has invited foreign multinationals to open their offices here specifically/primarily so that they create more jobs and make the economy at least a little better. Otherwise our only economic benefit would be from the company's taxes, if they even pay their full taxes rather than negotiating part of them away due to being in a position of power.