Guai Guai's green bags of coconut-flavored snacks are a familiar sight beside servers and semiconductor equipment in Taiwan, where engineers treat them as a good-luck charm. Now the company that makes them faces a labor dispute that could interrupt production.
Tom's Hardware reports, citing the Taipei Times, that 94% of workers at Guai Guai's Zhongli factory voted to authorize a strike. A walkout had not begun at publication time; workers were waiting for the company's response while negotiations continued.
The dispute follows Guai Guai's plan to move production from Zhongli to Hsinchu, about a 45-minute drive south and the center of Taiwan's semiconductor industry. Employees can keep their jobs by moving or commuting, and the company offered a 5% pay increase. The union argues that increase merely tracks Taiwan's newly announced minimum-wage adjustment and does not compensate longtime workers for the disruption.
A factory sale drives the dispute
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering bought the Zhongli property for NT$5.6 billion, about $176.1 million. The union says employees have not been offered a bonus, dividend or other share of that windfall, even though more than one-third of the workforce has been with Guai Guai for at least 30 years.
Workers are seeking written guarantees for severance and future raises. The union also wants compensation weighted toward longer-serving staff, severance for employees who do not want the longer commute and a NT$10,000 monthly increase, about $315, for those who remain.
The Taoyuan Department of Labor is monitoring the talks and has urged the company to account for workers' years of service and livelihoods. Until management and the union reach an agreement, the vote creates a credible threat to the snack's production, but it does not mean a shutdown is already underway.
