They were finally shamed into a 20% above the board wage hike last November [2] but before then, they went a solid 10 years of 3 - 5% COL adjustments.
They might pay well compared to other Taiwanese semi companies but that's only an indictment over how dismal the Taiwanese employment situation is. They're not lacking money, they're just cheap because the executive team culturally does not believe in rewarding talent.
[1] https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3925769 [2] https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4052667
Many big companies indeed pay relatively well in comparison to other professions, but workers are heavily underpaid. You can't justify the fact that companies have multi-billion profits and they pay "market rate" salaries at the same time. This is exploitation of workers, but because the amount they are being paid seems to be big, nobody seems to be protesting. Most tech workers should be earning in seven digits.
As you said, mandating they distribute profits will just result in gaming the system.
According to which metric?
The CCP is a direct hostile threat to Taiwan, I can understand why they're doing this.
In the case of the CCP though, I understand it.
TSMC competes with Samsung and Intel. If they don't compensate their engineers accordingly they can expect to lose them.
Of course, the other fun fact: ANY TSMC employees who went to China will never get jobs in Hsinchu et al. ever again. One-way decision only. Burned bridge.