Workers at the Guai Guai Company factory in Zhongli, Taiwan, have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, with 94% backing the action, after the snack maker announced plans to move production to Hsinchu. The factory has operated since 1968, and more than a third of its employees have worked there for 30 years or longer. The company disclosed the relocation plan on September 1. The new site sits roughly 45 minutes south by car, placing Guai Guai in Taiwan's Silicon Valley even as the dispute threatens to halt output.
Guai Guai has told workers they can keep their jobs if they move or commute to the new factory, and it has offered a 5% pay increase. The worker's union says that raise only matches recently announced changes to Taiwan's minimum wage. The union is seeking written guarantees on severance packages and pay raises, according to the Taipei Times. Specifically, it wants employees to share in the AI windfall, with more weight given to longer-serving staff, severance for those unwilling to work so far away, and a NT$10,000 (US$315) monthly salary increase for workers who stay on.
A central grievance concerns the sale of the Zhongli site. Taiwan's Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE) bought the property for redevelopment, netting Guai Guai NT$5.6 billion (US$176.1 million). According to the union, no bonus, dividend, or other benefit from that sale will be shared with the workers. The union is now awaiting the company's response and the outcome of negotiations between the two sides.
Talks between management and the union are expected to continue this week, and no further news from Taiwan has emerged on the matter. Taiwan's government has not taken a wholly neutral stance, according to the source. The local Taoyuan Department of Labor says the company's offer should respect workers' years of service and secure the livelihoods their labor has earned, and it is monitoring the situation and could decide to step in.
The standoff carries an unusual US angle for technology readers: the buyer of the Zhongli site, ASE, is a major player in semiconductor packaging and testing, the same supply chain that underpins chips designed and sold in the American market. Guai Guai's factory itself is a snack producer, not a chipmaker, but its relocation into Hsinchu puts it directly in Taiwan's semiconductor heartland. For now, the strike authorization remains the strongest signal from the workforce as negotiations proceed.
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