A multi-billion dollar project in Idaho is expected to create 4,500 jobs during construction and 2,000 permanent jobs by the end of the decade.
Micron Technology, Inc., one of the world’s five leading-edge semiconductor manufacturers, is building a $15 billion semiconductor fabrication factory, or “fab,” to accompany its existing research and design center in Boise.
Chip production is expected to start in early 2026.
Micron’s government-subsidized investments are part of a federal push to bring semiconductor supply chains back to the United States. The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act provides $53 billion in grants to projects that advance chip technology or produce semiconductors, the component materials, or packaging. Chips power electronics like smartphones and computers, military systems, and artificial intelligence programs.
The U.S. Department of Commerce made it clear it would prioritize funding companies that had signed project labor agreements with construction unions. In December 2023, labor unions and Micron agreed to the region’s first building trades project labor agreement (PLA) in decades.
In April, the Department of Commerce announced a $6.14 billion grant to Micron, in addition to $7.5 billion in loans. The funding will go toward construction of two fabs in New York, where Micron expects to invest $100 billion over the next two decades. The federal funds will also “unlock” $25 billion in outside investments to fund Micron’s Idaho project, the Biden-Harris administration said.
Micron still develops new chips in Boise, where it was founded more than 40 years ago, but manufacturing and assembling is done in Virginia and overseas.
Micron is already Idaho’s largest for-profit employer, with more than 5,000 employees in the Boise area. The company reduced its global workforce by 10% in 2023 as demand dropped for its main products, the Idaho Statesman reported.
As of August, the Idaho construction had used 3 million pounds of explosives, removed equivalent to 370 Olympic swimming pools worth of earth, and poured 113,000 cubic yards of concrete. More than 21,000 tons of steel and 30 cranes will be used in construction.
“It’s a big deal for that area and for union hands. We haven’t had something of this scale over there in a long time,” Laborers Local 155 business manager David Dillon said.
The Idaho PLA emphasizes workforce training and increasing construction jobs for women and minorities. Micron’s first registered apprenticeship program in Idaho had 21 apprentices as of April. Micron also opened a 124-seat child care center for workers’ children in Boise in September.
The federal funding deal with Micron is a non-binding preliminary agreement, meaning Micron has to comply with certain deals before funds are distributed.
As part of the $6.14 billion deal, Micron also agreed to discuss a neutrality agreement with the industrial division of the Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA), which would require Micron to remain neutral if employees wanted to unionize.
But Micron “has not yet committed to negotiating an agreement, nor have we made meaningful progress in our discussions with the company,” IUE-CWA Deputy Legislative and Political Director Etana Jacobi said.
Discussions so far have primarily focused on Micron’s New York project, Jacobi said. The New York project is expected to create more than four times as many jobs as the Idaho project.
Last November, IUE-CWA obtained the first ever labor neutrality agreement in the semiconductor industry with Akash Systems, which plans to construct a $432 million Oakland, California factory and hire roughly 250 production workers in the next five years.
Since the CHIPS Act was signed into law, companies have committed to projects that will create more than 78,000 construction jobs and 35,000 manufacturing jobs. IUE-CWA is seeking to unionize those new manufacturing jobs as they come online.
