TSMC Arizona’s Male Technician “Patted On The Buttocks” While Colleague Found Rubber Chicken Hanging Over His Desk, Alleges Lawsuit

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A lawsuit against the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which was initially filed last year, has been expanded to include 17 plaintiffs who allege a host of discriminatory and unsafe practices at the company. The suit surrounds TSMC’s much-hyped Arizona plant, with the plaintiffs, all of whom are American citizens, alleging that the firm discriminated against them during the time they spent at TSMC Arizona. The allegations include a preference for Mandarin or Chinese during the hiring process, routine bias against non-Taiwanese employees and unsafe working conditions.

Non-East Asian Workers Routinely Called “Stupid” Or “Lazy” At TSMC Arizona, Alleges Lawsuit

The lawsuit against TSMC was initially filed in November by 12 plaintiffs and refiled in June with 15 new plaintiffs. All of them are former or current TSMC Arizona employees, and in their complaint, they allege multiple acts of safety violations and discrimination at the firm.

The plaintiffs allege that TSMC favors hiring Taiwanese or Chinese candidates at the Arizona site, as they argue that “the HR team from TSMC Ltd. in Taiwan sends HR in the U.S. the resumes of Taiwanese/Chinese candidates in the United States that typically already have the ability to work in the U.S., who they have already vetted and found suitable for hire.”

According to them, one key manner by which American employees at TSMC have been discriminated against is language. Not only are invitations “to TSMC job fairs, per the instruction of Taiwan HQ, are in Chinese so as to only attract students of TSMC’s preferred race and national origin,” according to the lawsuit, but key meetings are also held in Chinese or Mandarin in order to exclude non-East Asians.

TSMC’s Arizona employees are often sent to Taiwan for training before they can start working. According to the suit, these employees “are routinely excluded by their Taiwanese colleagues, who oftentimes speak exclusively in Mandarin in their presences. Additionally, the complainants allege that the employees “are denigrated by management, and are subjected to a hostile work environment” and “frequently excluded from business discussions, as conversations are often conducted in Mandarin, and business documents are routinely written in Chinese.”

TSMC’s alleged preference for Mandarin is also present in US job vacancies, say the complainants. Roles for North America, Arizona and Washington often “add to the job posting that ‘Mandarin / Chinese’ is either required, preferred, or ‘a plus.'”

Crucially, the complainants also allege that non-East Asians, non-Taiwanese and non-Chinese TSMC employees experience “a hostile work environment” where American workers in particular “are constantly yelled at and referred to as ‘stupid’ or ‘lazy.'”

“At TSMC, it is common for American workers’ strong performances to be downplayed or discredited, and Americans are reviewed more harshly by TSMC, resulting in lower appraisal scores, and fewer promotions or opportunities for advancement,” say the complainants. Cultural clashes between the US engineers visiting Taiwan and the local engineers were also noted in a blog post in 2022.

According to James Perry, a Chief Human Resources Business Partner, and a claimant, the discriminatory comments include a Taiwanese frontline manager stating during a meeting: “”I’m so embarrassed; Americans are lazy, they don’t work hard enough, they don’t know enough, and they don’t know commitment.”

Perry adds that employees who did not work for 12 hours daily were considered poor performers at TSMC. The HR partner went as far as to reveal that after he left TSMC and joined Oracle, Oracle’s legal department notified him of an anonymous complaint against him from TSMC.

Perry had filed a complaint during his exit interview, which had noted that “his resignation was being compelled by the discriminatory and hostile treatment from manufacturing leaders,” says the lawsuit. He had named senior HR director Ted Chiang as expressing “negative and hostile behavior towards Mr. Perry and other non-Taiwanese and non-Chinese members of HR.”

Chiang was also mentioned by Elena Huizar, another HR business partner. Huizar recalled asking Chiang why Taiwanese nationals had replaced Americans who had left TSMC. She recalled Chiang responding that this was the case because TSMC “is an Asian company.”

Lacey Bostick, a Global Security, Compliance, and Firewall Service Delivery Manager, mentioned Tricia Chu, the Treasurer at TSMC Arizona. Chu, a Chinese national, “would berate Mr. Bostick in their daily meeting, telling him he was ‘stupid,’ and that his ‘plans [we]re wrong,’ and ‘not the TSMC way,'” says the lawsuit.

According to the suit, “When Mr. Bostick refused to respond to Ms. Chu’s hostility, remaining calm during the meetings, Ms. Chu would escalate her beratement, telling Mr. Bostick ‘I just hate you. You sit there and you never fight back.'”

Antonio Fisher, a USAF veteran, asked TSMC to provide him with a taxi to work during his training in Taiwan as his height and injuries from military service made it painful for him to use the bus. After TSMC denied his request, Fisher was hit by a car in Taiwan while traveling on his scooter and had no one in the hospital to translate for him.

Fisher, who works as an engineering technician at TSMC, also recalled that his training in Taiwan was in Mandarin or Chinese. He also received official emails in Chinese, and most of the meetings he participated in the US were also in Mandarin.

“Mr. Fisher is talked down to as if he is inferior to the Taiwanese or stupid, despite being more educated and experienced than a number of the Taiwanese workers,” says the lawsuit. “[He] has been repeatedly patted on the buttocks by older Taiwanese male engineers (an unwelcomed physical contact), and inappropriate sexual jokes at TSMC are common among Taiwanese male employees,” the suit adds.

Fisher also recalls arriving to work in 2024 to “find a rubber chicken hanging from the ceiling over the desk of his Black colleague (an engineer).” He found the act “to be shockingly hostile and discriminatory,” with the individual who hung the chicken not being punished by TSMC to his knowledge.

After repeatedly asking TSMC to provide protective equipment, Jyni Wyse, a laboratory technician in the Arizona site’s slurry department, inhaled a chemical she was working with. The accident caused her to have “difficulty breathing, and her heart rate skyrocketed.”

The suit alleges that a nurse at TSMC called the fire department instead of 911 even though she “had started to shake” and experienced more difficulty breathing. Eventually, she was forced to drive herself to the hospital. Wyse also alleges to have faced repercussions at TSMC for filing a complaint of the incident with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The repercussions included being “forced to sit alone in the “staff aug room” for hours at a time when there were no computers or work materials” and being ignored by her Taiwanese colleagues.

When TSMC was contacted by 12News for a statement, the firm made the following reply:

“Our policy is to not comment on litigation outside of court filings. We’re proud of the global team of more than 3,000 people that has come together to make our new facility in Arizona a success, and we look forward to growing the site into a major center of American semiconductor manufacturing excellence. TSMC is committed to providing a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for our employees, contractors, and everyone who works at our facilities around the world.”

The case is 5:24-cv-5684-VKD filed in the United States District Court Northern District of California San Jose Division.