Lawsuit by US workers accuses Apple chipmaker TSMC of ‘anti-American discrimination’

TSMC’s Arizona plants will enable Apple chips for older devices to be made in the US for the first time, but things haven’t exactly been going to plan.

The latest development is that a group of the company’s US workers have filed a lawsuit accusing the Taiwanese company of ‘anti-American discrimination’ …

A quick recap on the story so far

TSMC’s announcement that it was building a chip fabrication plant in Arizona was hailed as a major success for the US CHIPS Act – intended to free the US from dependence on China for advanced chip supplies, and to generate jobs for US workers. Apple proudly announced that it would be buying American-made chips for some of its devices.

The gloss soon began to wear off, however. The plant will only be able to make larger process chips, only suitable for older Apple devices, and it wasn’t long before TSMC demanded bigger subsidies and fewer rules.

The project is behind schedule, and over budget, with production already pushed into 2025, from 2024. There is talk of US-made chips costing more than those made in Taiwan, which could mean Apple would buy fewer of them than originally expected.

US job creation was first thrown into doubt when TSMC decided to bring in around 500 Taiwanese workers to speed up construction work. The battle over this quickly turned ugly, with almost half of the company’s hires being brought in from Taiwan.

Latest claim of anti-American discrimination

Now even one of the company’s own HR execs claims the company is illegally discriminating in favor of Taiwanese staff, according to a Forbes report.

The suit was originally filed in August by Deborah Howington, a current talent acquisition executive at TSMC, in California’s Northern District Court. As a member of TSMC’s HR leadership team, she claimed to have witnessed a culture of unlawful discriminatory practices that favored Taiwanese candidates and employees. And this month, twelve former TSMC staff with similar allegations signed onto the suit.

Howington alleged that TSMC specifically sought out Taiwanese candidates for U.S. jobs — and had confidentially engaged an “Asian headhunter” to recruit these individuals […]

“Having accepted $6 billion in U.S. federal funding and elected to compete within the U.S., it’s imperative that TSMC comply with federal discrimination laws and treat all races, national origins, and citizens equally,” the plaintiff group’s attorney Daniel Kotchen, who is a partner at law firm Kotchen & Low, told Forbes.

The company is also accused of holding local meetings in Mandarin rather than English to deliberately exclude American workers.

TSMC has not yet responded to the lawsuit, and declined to comment on it, issuing instead a generic statement about its values.

TSMC believes strongly in the value of a diverse workforce and we hire and promote without regard to gender, religion, race, nationality, or political affiliation because we respect differences, and believe that equal employment opportunities strengthen our competitiveness.

Photo by Conny Schneider on Unsplash