The Micron share price rose 3.25% to $884.30 by midday Friday, even as the union at its Taoyuan plant in Taiwan said members had voted down the company’s profit-sharing offer. Around 70% of the union’s more than 2,300 members rejected the proposal put to them on Thursday.
Talks that were supposed to resolve the dispute on Friday did not happen. A typhoon closed Taiwan, and the next round has moved to 27 October, which leaves the last open front in the dispute unresolved into a second week. The Micron share price has absorbed almost none of it, trading on memory pricing and AI demand rather than on Taiwan labor relations.
The Micron share price has fallen 19.74% in a month on China competition and AI spending fears, then rose 3.25% on Friday while the Taiwan labor dispute was going the other way. Source: TradingViewSeventy Percent of Taoyuan Members Voted the Offer Down
The union said the “struggle is far from over” and warned of possible further collective action, according to AFP. It also said that during negotiations on 21 October the company “failed to respond to any of the union’s demands.”
The scale of the rejection matters more than the symbolic walkout that preceded it. Only 11 officials joined Thursday’s 24-hour action at the gate, a fraction of the mandate the union holds after 1,994 of its 2,258 members backed a strike in the 1 to 6 October ballot, the vote that produced the one-day stoppage it announced on 20 October. A 70% rejection vote tells management the mandate is still live. FinanceFeeds covered that walkout on Thursday.
The union added that it continues to receive reports of dissatisfaction from rank-and-file employees in Taichung, where Micron signed a deal on 21 October. That is the first suggestion the settled front may not be as settled as it looked. Neither union has named a date for renewed action, so the Micron share price has nothing firm to discount yet.
A Typhoon Pushed Friday’s Talks to 27 October
Taiwan shut down ahead of Typhoon Champi, with hundreds of flights canceled, and the Taoyuan City Government meeting went with it. Micron did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment on the vote.
Micron makes around 50% to 60% of its chips in Taiwan, and the two unions represent 12,000 of the 15,000 people it employs there, which is why a four-day delay is not a neutral event. Every week the Taoyuan dispute stays open is a week of headline risk attached to the Micron share price, even though no production has stopped moving through the fabs.
Investor Takeaway
A 70% rejection keeps the strike mandate alive, so the Micron share price carries an open labor risk into the 27 October talks.
Micron’s Answer Was a Global Bonus Tied to Profit Minus Capex
Micron Taiwan chairman Lu Donghui set out the company’s counter on 22 October. From fiscal 2027 the company will run a quarterly profit-sharing bonus for its global workforce on top of the existing annual payment, with the pool calculated as profit after tax minus projected capital spending for the following quarter, using fiscal 2026 as the baseline. Payouts split 50% cash and 50% shares.
Subtracting next quarter’s capital plan from the pool is the part the union objects to, because Micron has guided to heavy spending through fiscal 2027 to meet AI memory demand. The deduction shrinks the base in exactly the years the workers want to share in. For Taiwan specifically the company offered higher employer pension contributions at 10% against 8%, three extra paid days off, larger shift allowances and structural salary adjustments. The union had threatened strike action as far back as 1 September over the same point, and the Micron share price treated Thursday’s announcement as a non-event.
Samsung Settled at 10.5% and SK Hynix at 10%, Against a 15% Demand
Samsung Electronics averted a strike by agreeing to distribute bonuses equivalent to 10.5% of operating profit to its semiconductor employees, and SK Hynix agreed last year to allocate 10% of annual operating profit to an employee bonus pool. Those two settlements are the benchmarks the Taoyuan union is working from, and both landed well below what it is asking for.
Both unions at Micron asked for 15% of operating profit paid quarterly, plus a one-off fiscal 2026 bonus the union sizes at about 83 months of salary. The demand sits five percentage points above what two Korean rivals have conceded, which is the gap any deal has to close. The Micron share price has risen more than 300% over the past year while that gap stayed open, which is a large part of why the union believes the company can afford to shut it. FinanceFeeds has tracked the pricing and capacity backdrop through Kioxia’s NAND ceiling and Citi’s note on Micron NAND pricing.
The Micron Share Price Is Trading the Memory Cycle Rather Than the Strike
Friday’s 3.25% gain had little to do with Taoyuan. Bank of America named Micron a top AI winner this week, citing memory demand from AI infrastructure and cloud spending, and the whole memory group bounced after Western Digital’s results landed on Thursday night.
The Micron share price is down 19.74% over one month and 7.93% over three, while still up 199.18% for the year and 348.88% over twelve months, on a market value of exactly $1.00 trillion and 12.31 times trailing earnings of $75.30 a share. The published bull and bear scenarios and the ranges on Western Digital were all set before this week, and none of them were built around a labor dispute. What the Micron share price does next week still depends on memory pricing far more than on a meeting at Taoyuan City Government.
Investor Takeaway
At 12.31 times trailing earnings the Micron share price is the cheapest of the large memory names, and a bonus settlement at 10% to 15% of operating profit is a cost the multiple can absorb.