Why does this NOT surprise me???
We’ve sure as hell outsourced everything else… Grrrr…
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest chipmaker, will delay production at its new Arizona chip plant to 2025 due to a shortage of skilled labor.
The year-long delay comes as trade relations between Washington and Beijing, have deteriorated over the past several years.
TSMC Chairman Mark Liu broke the news to investors on a second-quarter earnings call on July 21.
Mr. Liu said that the company does not have enough skilled local workers to install advanced equipment at its new facility, in time for the official deadline.
Full article, HERE from the Epoch Times
And frankly, I find it ‘funny’ that the union is bitching, considering they don’t have any qualified personnel to DO the installations…
But, but, but, I “identify” as being a skilled, qualified installer…
Sounds more like, “We aren’t willing to pay American wages, so we will bring in workers from overseas”.
Wages are part of it, true. But — we have the same problem in the trades. We can’t find people willing to take the time and investment needed to do a good job, and if you ask pretty much any tradesman (or woman — there are a lot of good ones) the biggest problem they have is they can’t get help. Qualified or even otherwise.
To many of our young people can’t read or write effectively. They can’t do arithmetic. The don’t understand science.
The problem is only going to get worse as those of us who are capable of doing the work age out of the work force.
It’s a scam. The whole thing has always been a scam.
You MUST work 12 hour shifts, no 8 hour shifts. You are on call ALWAYS. You don’t get to sign up for regular working hours, they keep changing them on you. And they pay crap.
Jurrel looked into it deeply – the company NEVER EVER intended to hire American workers and when it looked like they might have to (a lot of qualified people applied) they changed the working conditions to things that are obnoxious and insane and no one does here in the USA (or even Taiwan to be honest). I think their workplace ‘rules’ are probably even illegal under US law, but haven’t looked into it.
It was always a scam.
They just want to bring Their people HERE.
And they want the government (Us people) to pay for it. Look at all the tax breaks that they got.
Went and read the article. Totally avoids the workplace issues.
Then again look who wrote it…
Like the Chinese battery plants coming to Michigan importing Chinese labor.
Ah, but how do you get to be skilled trades? A lot of places won’t hire apprentices or new-from-trade-schools, while others won’t ensure a steady paycheck so all work is temporary of nature.
Neither are conducive to having skilled tradesmen available when they are needed.
Also, places like SpaceX that are expanding and are good companies to contract to are sucking a lot of the experienced people out of the pool. Especially since SpaceX has a pattern of hiring contractors who do good work as permanent employees.
Don’t blame it on the tradespeople, blame it on the MBAs and bean counters that determined in the 70’s and 80’s it was cheaper, faster, better to get rid of skilled trades programs at all the big companies and go to temp contracts and out-of-country workers that may still be wet on the back, if you know what I mean.
And also blame it on all the lawyers that sued tech programs in high schools out of existence.
And blame all the ‘Arts Magnet’ high schools being created to make more and more and more fine arts fast food workers while at the same time removing and destroying any and all trade programs, tech programs and STEM programs.
And and the push for stupid useless degrees instead of going to trade/tech schools and learning trade skills.
Scientific, Technical, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) an acronym pushed to encourage students into meaningful science based majors, in part to have a career that actually paid the the bills, and in part to produce graduates needed for our advanced tech oriented future. I see now that STEM has morphed in STEAM (Scientific, Technical, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics). Arts? are you s***ing me? Just what society needs, more Art Majors flipping burgers at the local Micky Ds. Don’t get me wrong, I very much appreciate Art, Music, Literature, etc and we would be a poorer society without them, but the way colleges and universities teach these subjects, crank out degrees and ignore talent and drive means only a few art grads will make enough money to pay off their student debt.
Most automation engineering positions I am offered are contract.
But I’ve met a lot of guys who like that.
Gypsies.
Not for me.
I see that the hangup seems to be associated with installing the equipment. Considering that a major amount of semiconductor manufacturing left the USA about 20 years ago, a shortage of people qualified to install the equipment makes a lot of sense.
My wife worked for a company that did those installations, and things were getting quite slow in the early ‘Aughts. I was working for Agilent, a spinoff from HP, and the semiconductor operation was sold off in 2005. Most of my division was laid off in 2001 and ’02. (Finding a company still building semis in the US was a unicorn hunt. Most were building overseas, and maybe doing testing/test development in the US.)
I never dealt with TSMC, so can’t speak to those issues, but installing semi manufacturing equipment can be a bit tricky.
I have to ask if it’s the labor that’s cheaper, or is it the lack of oppressive regulations that grease the palms of politicians and bureaucrats?
My field was construction, and the enormous amounts of money spent just to satisfy regulations, with insurance costs, could have been better spent on employee wages. At the end of my career, the money just wasn’t there for increasing wages, and keeping a small company afloat was a lesson in frustration.
John Van Stry is 100% on-target.
They’ve already had at least one fatality and a fire visible from Cave Creek, AZ. The “NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK” issue is about nobody wants to work 7x10s on paper with 2 hours of free labor working through breaks and lunch and staying late “for the collective pride” or “to homor your betters who manage you,” and also about cutting corners on safety. ADOSH is starting to sniff around closer than the Taiwanese are used to. Supply of bodies vs. demand in Asia has traditionally meant that high populations mean life is cheap. They are used to people losing fingers and limbs, or getting burned, and having local society side with big bizz as a default, and driving the victims to silence or to beg for charity from their extended family networks.
https://kjzz.org/content/1851968/reporter-finds-labor-safety-concerns-tsmc-rushes-build-chip-plants-phoenix
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/07/14/arizona-workers-accuse-tsmc-of-fatalities-at-dangerous-construction-site
All- Thanks for the comments, looks like I need to look a little ‘deeper’ at this one.
If the Union – and especially those who run the Union – were any damned good at building and managing a major tech industry, they would already be DOING it.
All their members would be in jobs with the wages and conditions that they Union “says” should exist, and the US wouldn’t have to go to Taiwan for it’s damned microchips.
How often do you do a Union actually doing that?
Why do you think that our respective manufacturing industries have been fleeing overseas for decades? It doesn’t matter a damn how you think things “ought” to be run if the cold hard economics of trying to run a business in this environment just sends the business broke. Installation of equipment on that level isn’t just a matter of bolting it to the floor. I’d be interested to know what the training interval would be to get technicians with the basic skills to the point where they are competent with the requirements that are specific to the equipment under discussion.
Potentially the equivalent of transitioning a pilot from one aircraft type, to another. Jim will appreciate that.
What is the private-sector Union membership trend over there? In Aus less than 1-in-5 and falling, last I heard.
One of the major factors that drove the ‘chip” industry, other than design, out of the US, was the cyclic nature of the business. I think the first crash was in ’85, where Intel tossed the dust covers over the machines in a couple fabs in the South Bay, locked the doors and walked away. Those buildings sat unused and literally rotted away. They contained hundreds of the machines that I used to build. We went from twenty+ a month to zero overnight. Price was $750k base, before options. Employee count went from 550 to maybe 100. The conglomerate that owned it sold it a couple years later.
IIRC, it was expected to take most employees about 6 months before they were competent in their department.
I suspect that trying to run a company like that with a labor union would be the kiss of death. I’ve heard the stories, talked to union people, and if I had a business that voted to go union, it would be moved out of state or across the borders. It’s not just the increased pay scale needed, it would be the fact you can’t control the quality of the employees. Few companies or industries can handle that double whammy without .gov assistance of some sort. US labor unions ensure that everyone works to the lowest common denominator. Do too good a job, and your fellow workers will make your life difficult. You get ahead only by seniority. Seems very much like communism.
Will…
I’ve spent my life in farming, which has a very similar dynamic. Partly because of economics and partly because of seasonal variability.
The Unions always whine that we don’t “share” when things are profitable, but when profit is costs are exceeding revenue, they utterly refuse to countenance any form of flexibility in wages or conditions. I’ve seen them demand wage rises in the middle of a screaming drought .
They act like they’d rather see people on the dole, than working out some kind of deal that lets business keep operating and the employees keep their job.
Same reason I’m mostly sceptical when I hear people talking about “excessive profits” . Mostly that comes from people who have no idea of what it cost , or how much risk was involved getting to that point. Very “communist”…..
Plus……. I may have inherited a little of my attitude from my father.
He was in the Army during WW2 and the documented sabotage of the war effort by the Socialist waterfront Unions made them utterly stink as far as the troops were concerned. Strikes and go-slows over when there were equipment and supplies for the troops to be loaded. Theft and “accidental” destruction of equipment ….
It might not have been because – early in the war – Moscow and Berlin were allies, and the Unions regarded Moscow as the home of International Socialism, but draw your own conclusions.
I Read the article.
Sounds like a typical Union. Rather see people unemployed than people working who are not in the Union.
…. And no, I’m not ready to believe that the largest producer of this tech in the world doesn’t know how to get factories built, and builds some of the world’s most technical shit using exhausted workers missing their fingers.
Nor am I ready to believe that the author is bullshitting just because he has a Chinese name , not an “American” one.
Union bosses are politicians, and no more trustworthy than any others of that type.
Peter- Good points too!