US chip factory workers say a struggle to survive on wages as industry booms
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
One line notes that TSMC made a deal with the local union, so presumably they're doing ok?
Later in another very specific example:
>Workers are pushing for a $27 minimum wage at the semiconductor plant, which they say is the minimum required to live in the Beaverton area. They are currently paid around $21 an hour.
So I guess the title is just about the Beaverton location? Or at least that's the one with any actual specifics?
keep in mind experienced fab technicians are making much much more.
It would be cool to have large high-tech manufacturing industry back in NA, but on the other hand, it's hard for me to grasp the economics behind it. My understanding was due to minimum wage laws, high prices, non-existent infrastructure and etc., it wouldn't be profitable to sell them outside of US (and that's why it was offshored, along with the Japanese/Taiwanese companies just being better quality wise). Why would a North American, European or Asian company that design hardware buy these chips when they'll always be more expensive than anything that's built overseas?
Also the jobs are fairly specialized, unlike Amazon warehouse jobs, where you can make $20/hr. So not sure how attractive the positions are for the local talent. I guess, if the governments continuously subsidized it, it would make sense. But it's not like agriculture industry, where one could make the "food security" argument.
Well, unfortunately for a shareholder or executive who expects an unreasonable payout for the operation of this business on American soil. They're now just paying for the sins of their forefathers who handed over a strategically-vital industry to a geopolitical rival in hopes of making the number bigger at the end of a 90-day period.
If America didn't have to compete with the free market to ship an attractive product, it would be a different story. But the parent is right; it's prospector-mentality to assume America would be fixed by fabbing silicon domestically.
That's why you invest in it until you have a competitive product. The "free market" is a myth anyways. Most of the competition is playing with house money.
Forty-five years ago, there was no high-tech industry in most of Asia. Now it's the only place where you can get most electronic goods made at scale. Why? It's not just the cheaper labor. If that were the case, companies wouldn't have stayed in China or South Korea nearly as long as they have. It's because the governments in these countries, China especially, said "damn the externalities, full speed ahead" on a category of manufacturing that would give them incredible leverage over world affairs.
They dumped products into the market, knowing that some Wharton-educated coke addict in lower Manhattan would cry "Uncle!" when he saw the prices his investment targets were going to have to compete against. Pump more money into manufacturing, lather, rinse, repeat. Now the majority of consumer goods of any type sold anywhere are Chinese.
We could do the same, you just have to tell the Wall Street types it's their necks on the line if the US loses its competitive edge.
If we want to get serious about ramping up domestically produced chips for critical applications, we need to cut that crap out and focus on efficiency and quality.
If we want to get serious about ramping up domestically produced chips, the state has to do it itself. People piss and moan about Intel but it's not like Northrop Grumman could do their job any better. The best way for the US government to realize the scale of their requests is to fix the problem internally, instead of pitching it as a bidding war for Goofus and Gallant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inlDT62oGy8 (NSFW language)