Thursday, February 26, 2015

Taiwan's labor force will start shrinking next year: premier

Taiwan's labor force will start shrinking next year: premier

2015/02/26 14:47:52

Taipei, Feb. 26 (CNA) Premier Mao Chi-kuo said Thursday that Taiwan's labor force will decrease rapidly starting next year due to the country's declining birth rate.

Citing a forecast by the Council for Economic Planning and Development, Mao said Taiwan's working-age population -- people aged 15-65 -- will begin a parabolic decline in 2016 after peaking at 17 million this year.

Starting in 2016, the working-age population will fall by 180,000 people per year, which will amount to a decrease of 1.8 million people over 10 years, he said at a news conference. The premier warned that such a decline in the labor force will pose a more serious threat to the country than the drop in the overall population.

To address the problem, the government will need to work to increase the labor force participation rate and ensure that young people are properly trained to meet job market demand, he said.

The government will also help people overcome problems that are deterring them from getting married and having children, he added.

The premier did not elaborate but the reasons often cited by young people for having second thoughts about starting a family include stagnant wages and high living costs, especially housing.

(By Hsieh Chia-chen and Y.F. Low)
ENDITEM/pc

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Taiwan History: 2-28-47 Kerr- "The February Incident"

Note: taIWWan blog will occasionally display primary source material  concerning "Taiwan history" from the front pages of newspapers, books, and magazines for the information of our readers. 


The following is the account of the February 28, 1947 incident which started the massacre of Taiwanese intellectuals by the government described in George H. Kerr's Formosa Betrayed .



Taiwan History: 10-26-71 - U.N. Seats Peking and Expels Taipei

Note: taIWWan blog will occasionally display primary source material  concerning "Taiwan history" from the front pages of newspapers, books, and magazines for the information of our readers.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Chinese workers pose a growing threat: academic

Chinese workers pose a growing threat: academic

By Chung Li-hua and Chen Wei-han  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Taiwanese people shout slogans to welcome China’s top Taiwan policy maker Zhang Zhi-jun (not pictured) at the Taoyuan International Airport on June 25, 2014.

Photo: AFP

The number of Chinese businesspeople and white-collar workers traveling to Taiwan on business visas, which surpassed 110,000 last year, poses a growing threat to the nation’s job market and security, political observers said.
National Immigration Agency (NIA) statistics show the number of Chinese business travelers has increased from 15,000 in 2005 to 34,000 in 2008, 77,000 in 2013 and 111,422 last year.
The figure is expected to balloon if the cross-strait service trade pact is passed, which would allow more businesspeople and white-collar employees to work in this country, lowering wage levels, worsening youth unemployment and threatening national security, National Cheng Kung University law professor Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信) said.
Hsu said that following an amendment to the Entry Permission to Taiwan Area for the People from Mainland China (大陸地區人民進入台灣許可辦法) in 2013, the immigration agency lifted restrictions on companies eligible for business entry, including the requirement of a minimum annual revenue of NT$10 million (US$317,900) and a maximum of 400 entries per year.
In addition to the 103,742 business travelers who stayed less than six months last year, 7,680 Chinese were employed in the name of “fulfilling a contract,” such as international job transfers, goods inspection, technical counseling and after-sale service, Hsu said.
Chinese businesspeople and white-collar workers can initially stay in Taiwan for three years and are eligible to have their stay extended, with no restriction on the number of renewals, he said.
The immigration agency and Ministry of Labor are unable and unwilling to deal with Chinese workers in Taiwan, Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-liam (孫友聯) added, citing an incident in New Taipei City in December last year in which a Chinese technician died while installing an elevator, proving that Chinese are working in Taiwan.
Son said the ministry requires that foreign workers be paid a monthly salary of at least NT$47,971 and that employers purchase labor insurance for their employees against occupational injuries, but that Chinese businesspeople are not under the jurisdiction of the ministry and are not subject to employment regulations.
Chinese businesspeople and white-collar workers provide a convenient option for employers who wish to cut costs, Son said.
Hsu cited a recent article in Defense News that said Taiwan’s open policy toward China helps pave the way for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to conduct clandestine activities to infiltrate Taiwanese society.
Chinese businesspeople and white-collar workers could pose an even greater threat to Taiwan’s national security than ordinary Chinese tourists, as they can stay in Taiwan for an extended period of time and become a “Chinese fifth column,” Hsu said.
The NIA said that easing entry regulations for Chinese businesspeople is aimed at facilitating small and medium-sized firm’s operations, and that it would redouble its inspections of such visitors.

Monday, February 16, 2015

China and Taiwan: reunification or confrontation? (2005)

Socialism Today

Socialism Today 92 - June 2005

China and Taiwan: reunification or confrontation?

China’s adoption of an anti-secession law on 14 March, threatening ‘non-peaceful’ steps should Taiwan declare formal independence, marked a sharp rise in tensions across the Taiwan Strait. In April, mass anti-Japanese protests – in which the Taiwan question played an important role – erupted in a dozen Chinese cities. These events have been followed by a furious round of cross-strait diplomacy that has raised hopes of a possible solution to one of Asia’s potentially most dangerous conflicts. LAURENCE COATES writes.
IN RECENT WEEKS, China’s nominally ‘communist’ regime has been rolling out the red carpet for a succession of top Taiwanese opposition politicians. This drama, covered to saturation point by China’s state-controlled media, marks a new phase in the troubled relationship between mainland China and the island it regards as a ‘renegade province’. On 26 April, the chairman of Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Lien Chan, arrived in China for a ‘historic’ visit that culminated in a meeting with China’s president Hu Jintao. This was the first time the leaders of the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had met since the end of the civil war in 1949, which resulted in the establishment of the Stalinist People’s Republic of China, and the ignominious flight of the KMT to Taiwan.
Lien’s trip, and the visit days later by James Soong, leader of the KMT’s junior opposition ally, the People First Party (PFP), reflect an outbreak of ‘China fever’ among Taiwan’s opposition pan-blue bloc (the name derives from the colour of the KMT emblem). On 29 April, Lien and Hu unveiled a five-point ‘common vision’ to promote bilateral exchanges. They agreed that Taiwan and China should resume dialogue based on the so-called ‘1992 consensus’, which states that the two sides are both part of one China. This so-called consensus, however, is hotly disputed and, even according to the KMT, allows differing interpretations of what ‘one China’ should mean.
The new pan-blue strategy is driven above all by the relentless pressure from Taiwanese and foreign capitalists for closer integration with China – the world’s fastest growing economy. KMT leaders have seized on this to boost their own position in the domestic political dogfight with the ruling pan-green bloc led by Taiwan’s president, Chen Shui-bian. The Chinese regime refuses to deal directly with Chen, whose formally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ended half a century of KMT rule in elections five years ago. In reality, Chen has abandoned any serious notion of pushing for independence, which is supported by less than one-fifth of Taiwan’s population (while a mere 10% favour formal reunification with China).
Under Chen’s presidency, the DPP has been ‘housetrained’, partly under pressure from US imperialism, but also by the increasingly pro-China agenda of Taiwan’s capitalist class. A sensational example of this occurred in March when a pro-DPP business tycoon and former presidential advisor, Hsu Wen-lung, published a letter in support of Beijing’s Anti-Secession Law (ASL) and the ‘one China’ principle. Chen himself, in yet another of Taiwan’s political u-turns, signed an accord to work for closer China links with Soong in February. The president even said that he "would not rule out Taiwan’s eventual reunion with China, provided Taiwan’s 23 million people accepted it".
The Chen-Soong agreement outraged many pan-green supporters and led to the resignation of four presidential advisers. Chen is widely believed to be behind Soong’s trip to China, although the latter, anxious not to lose ground to the KMT, denies this.
Part of China’s strategy towards Taiwan has been to ‘influence politics through business’, repeating a method it used in Hong Kong in the 1990s to woo the territory’s financial barons away from the departing British colonial administration. Taiwanese socialist, James Yao, points out: "Nowadays Taiwanese capitalists hire at least ten million workers in China and almost all Taiwan’s top 50 manufacturing companies have subsidiaries there. The mainland’s abundant cheap labour, cheap land, tax-breaks and subsidies for foreign companies, mean that China has actually become the main source of profit for Taiwanese capitalism".

Former archenemies

BEIJING’S POSITION OF refusing to deal with Chen’s DPP is part of an overall strategy to keep the pressure upon Taiwan’s pro-independence parties and bolster the pan-blues. There is more than a little irony in the CCP’s courting of the KMT which, when it ruled the mainland, was synonymous with anti-communism, corruption and domination by foreign capitalism. The strikingly uncharismatic Lien, who The Economist described as a ‘serial election loser’, was given the kind of reception normally reserved for world leaders. With massive and overwhelmingly favourable media coverage in Taiwan the visit has temporarily transformed Lien’s domestic poll ratings. Students at the prestigious Beijing University reportedly paid up to $120 – the equivalent of two months’ wages for many Chinese workers – for a ticket to hear Lien speak. The audience gave him a standing ovation underlining the reactionary, nationalist and pro-regime mood among many students and intellectuals in China. Such enthusiasm for the KMT leader would be unthinkable on Taiwan’s own campuses where the mood is heavily skewed towards ‘Taiwanese identity’.
Beijing’s spin doctors portrayed Lien’s tour as a historic turning point, describing the KMT as "friends from afar" and "compatriots". Lien, in his keynote speech to Beijing students, spoke of beating "swords into ploughshares to create cross-strait peace". In a rare reference to the real reason for the new détente, he asked: "Why can’t China and Taiwan work together to earn foreign currency?"
The CCP-KMT talks mark an abrupt turnaround, coming one month after the pan-greens organised a massive 400,000-strong demonstration in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, in protest at China’s anti-secession law. The new law – which merely repeats old threats – was a major tactical blunder by the Beijing regime, playing into the hands not just of Taiwan’s pan-greens (support for independence rose 5% in one week) but also of Washington and Tokyo, both anxious to check China’s rise as a regional superpower. It was concocted as a warning to Taipei before last December’s parliamentary elections, which most observers including Beijing wrongly expected to strengthen the pan-greens’ grip on power. In the event, however, the pan-blues made modest gains.
At this point, China’s central leadership would probably have preferred to withdraw the proposed legislation but was trapped by its own nationalist propaganda. Any attempt to prevent the rubber-stamp National People’s Congress debating the anti-secession law would have risked a split within China’s vast state bureaucracy and stiff opposition from the People’s Liberation Army, where Taiwan-bashing and Great China nationalism have been whipped up, in part to justify big increases in military spending. To minimise the fallout, Beijing twice sent envoys to Washington in an attempt to soothe US misgivings. Until recently the Bush administration has worked to keep the lid on cross-strait tensions, exerting pressure on Taiwan’s pan-green administration to tone down its anti-China rhetoric in return for a less combative stance from Beijing. But this time US imperialism rejected Beijing’s overtures. In a pre-emptive warning, the US signed a new military communiqué with Japan on 19 February, for the first time citing security in the Taiwan Strait as a "common strategic objective". Drawing Japan – Taiwan’s former colonial ruler – into the cross-strait imbroglio could not fail but to antagonise Beijing.

A new Great Game

THE SITUATION TODAY is in some ways analogous to the first years of the last century, when a ferocious imperialist ‘land grab’ redrew the political map of Asia. US imperialism has undertaken a series of provocative moves reflecting the abiding influence of neo-conservative warmongers inside the Bush administration. The ‘neocons’, who describe Japan as the "Britain of the Far East" (ie a military satellite of US imperialism), are pushing the nationalist government of Junichiro Koizumi to abandon Japan’s post-war ‘pacifist’ constitution and remilitarise, providing the US arms industry with a gigantic new market. The nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations – a body he wants to abolish – follows the same pattern. Bolton is an outspoken advocate of Taiwanese independence and a former paid advisor to the Taipei government. Similar moves are afoot in Japan: Koizumi has surrounded himself with advocates of Taiwanese independence with close ties to the island’s pan-green leadership. The ultra-nationalist mayor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, a notorious China-basher, was a guest at president Chen’s inauguration last year.
As if there were not enough imperialist powers tramping around in the Asian arena, Europe has also made an incursion. The dispute over whether to lift the EU’s 16-year-old arms embargo against China is a continuation, in a new guise, of the transatlantic split during the Iraq war. French and German capitalism, in particular, are keen to expand trade and investment with China, but also see it as an important future counterweight to US global domination. For the time being the EU has retreated over lifting the embargo under furious pressure from Washington. China’s passage of the anti-secession law provided the pretext for governments in Britain and the Nordic countries to extricate themselves from a potentially serious clash with the US. But other EU governments, led by France, are sticking to their embargo-lifting guns. On a visit to Beijing in April, the French prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said the anti-secession law was "completely compatible with the position of France", and went on to sell his hosts ten Airbus jets for a tidy €600 million.
In response to a resurgent US-Japan military alliance, and reeling from its setback over the EU embargo, the Chinese regime initially encouraged the youthful anti-Japan protests that broke out in April. While the catalyst for the protests was Japan’s approval of right-wing revisionist history books, the real underlying issue was "which country, Japan or China, will be the dominant Asian power of the 21st century". (Time magazine) Taiwan, not least for reasons of military logistics, is a key battleground in this struggle. As Hu told Koizumi during their meeting at Jakarta’s Asia-Africa summit, Taiwan "touches the nucleus of the interest of China".
But underlining the extremely unstable political situation in China – a factor of world importance that is largely overlooked by capitalist commentators – the CCP regime found it could not fully control the anti-Japan protests. While most Chinese students, at this stage, are nationalistic and generally support the regime’s capitalist agenda, the anti-Japan movement was not politically homogeneous. Beijing’s fear that this movement could fuse with other protests – against the social effects of the shift to capitalism – were borne out when workers in several cities in southern China went on strike at Japanese-owned companies. In mid-April, 10,000 workers at a Japanese-invested cordless phone maker, Uniden Electronics, in Shenzhen, began a ground-breaking strike for trade union recognition.
Against this background, the CCP-KMT talks were a nationalistic propaganda gift for the regime, helping it keep the streets clear from what could have been huge anti-Japan rallies on the historic anniversary of 4 May (when in 1919 students protested against the Versailles Treaty which transferred German concessions in China to Japanese control).
Washington’s neocons, however, who regard China as the only serious challenger to US global power in the future, will not sit back and allow the current phase of cross-strait diplomacy to proceed entirely under Beijing’s direction. Commenting on the visits by Lien and Soong, Bush called upon Beijing to open "dialogue with the duly elected leader in Taiwan and that means president Chen and his cabinet". Having tilted towards Beijing in the past (to curb pro-Taiwan populism), Washington is more than capable of tilting towards Chen and the pan-greens in the future as part of a China containment strategy.

Taiwan divided

WITHIN TAIWAN, THE CCP-KMT talks have aroused sharply divergent views. Pan-green politicians predictably accused Lien of ‘selling out Taiwan’. But a majority in opinion polls has taken a positive view, reflecting growing anxiety over the risk of war, and a feeling that whichever eventual legal framework emerges, Taiwan and China are closely linked by culture, language and economic ties. "It would seem that Lien has been able, in one trip, to resolve the half-century long stand-off across the Taiwan Strait and that peace and unification with China are now just around the corner", an editorial in the pan-green Taipei Times noted. Opinion polls taken immediately after Lien’s return showed 56% had a positive view of the visit, with 31% negative.
Departing from its earlier counterproductive policy of ballistic bluster (with 700 missiles aimed at Taiwan), Beijing has embarked upon a charm offensive. The Chinese regime offered Lien some economic incentives: an offer to lift restrictions on Taiwan tourism by Chinese citizens; a pledge to remove tariffs on imports of Taiwanese fruit; and a gift of two giant pandas! The ‘fruit offensive’ is an especially shrewd move designed to undermine DPP support in its southern agricultural heartland where many farmers have suffered as a result of WTO membership in 2001 (fully supported by the Chinese regime) and the ensuing flood of foreign farm goods.
China’s peace gestures (with the prospect of more during Soong’s visit) have increased the pressure on Chen. The fruit and tourism concessions are not worth much without an agreement on direct flights, which Taipei has traditionally blocked until a broader cross-strait deal is reached. Currently, all air traffic between Taiwan and the mainland is routed via Hong Kong, Japan or South Korea.
While, at first, the pan-green leadership thought it could put a block on the KMT’s ‘NGO diplomacy’, it has been forced to amend this. At one point, Chen speculated "whether Lien means to lose Taiwan in a new round of KMT-CCP talks, after the KMT lost the mainland in its last negotiation with the Chinese Communist Party". But with big business lobbying hard for talks, Chen stopped attacking Lien as a ‘communist propaganda tool’ and, belatedly, gave his blessing to the trip, describing it as "stones to be thrown to explore the road ahead".
While the DPP is attempting to discredit the KMT as ‘not representing Taiwan’s interests’, it is not prepared to say who is behind the KMT policy – the capitalists who are being drawn to the Chinese economy like a magnet. For this reason, further twists and turns lie ahead, not excluding the possibility of a Chen-Hu summit, with the pan-green leader playing the role of a Taiwanese Menachem Begin (the hardline Israeli leader who signed a peace agreement with Egypt in 1979).

Capitalist agenda

THE QUESTION OF reunification or independence for Taiwan cannot be viewed separately from the interests of the working class in China, Taiwan and the entire region. The Chinese regime has made the reincorporation of Taiwan the touchstone of its nationalist vision of a Great (capitalist) China. Championing the market economy and no longer able to effectively (mis)use the language of ‘socialism’ in an attempt to preserve a social base, the CCP is dependent upon nationalism to divert the attention of the masses from rising unemployment and other social ills. Consequently, any cross-strait deal concluded on the basis of the present regime would inevitably buttress its hold on the provinces and the oppression of non-Han (Han is the ethnic term for Chinese) peoples such as the Uighurs, Hui and Tibetans. The hollowness of the regime’s nationalist message is shown by its treatment of 130 million migrant workers from the poorer inland provinces – Han Chinese who, nevertheless, face semi-racist discrimination and police harassment in the cities where they work.
For the Taiwanese capitalists, the remaining fetters to the free movement of capital and goods arising from Taiwan’s unresolved national status have become a major irritant. This is despite the fact that four-fifths of Taiwan’s foreign investment already goes to the mainland. Capitalist lobby groups demand the lifting of the ban on investments which still applies to certain sectors and an easing of restrictions on hiring mainland staff. They want progress on government procurement (ie opening public-sector investment projects to private tender), an issue bogged down in the dispute over what official title Taiwan uses to designate itself (it is formally still the ‘Republic of China’ and Beijing opposes a change to ‘Republic of Taiwan’ as a step towards independence).
Just as big European corporations lobbied for EU enlargement in order to broaden their base of operations and play workers in new member states off against their higher-paid counterparts in the older EU countries, Taiwanese capitalists see closer integration with China as a means to free themselves from the ‘burden’ of Taiwan’s higher wages and social insurance. Of course, there are huge potential benefits for the population as a whole from the fusion of Asia’s ‘silicon island’ – Taiwan is a world leader in semiconductors and computer electronics – with China’s vast labour force and world-class manufacturing base. But on a capitalist basis this process will inevitably be accompanied by an offensive against the working class over working hours, labour ‘flexibility’, and wages.
Socialists stand for the right of self-determination for the Taiwanese people. But the cross-strait issue – or national question inside Taiwan – is sharply polarised. The island has experienced a growth of national identity over the last two decades, with the proportion regarding themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese rising from 18% in 1992 to 40% today. But an even bigger share – 50% – sees itself as both. The DPP leadership, having embraced the capitalists’ neo-liberal agenda, has failed to convince the population as a whole on the case for independence. The vast majority prefer to keep things as they are. In other words, they do not relish reunification with the mainland but neither do they want a definitive break. This situation is compounded by the political monopoly enjoyed by the two bourgeois blocs – pan-blue and pan-green – whose position on attacking the working class is largely identical. Even on the cross-strait issue, following Chen’s abandonment of independence as a serious option, there is very little separating the KMT and DPP. Taking account of the popular mood, the KMT no longer stands for reunification but rather ‘closer ties’ with China.
A growing disdain for both blocs explains the record low turnout – 51% – in December’s election. Nevertheless, in the struggle for power and positions, both pan-blues and pan-greens resort to crude nationalism, which has the potential to spark serious inter-ethnic clashes in the future.

What alternative?

JUST AS THERE are left currents in both camps, there are also chauvinistic and racist elements. Soong is a hate-figure among many Minnan, the majority ethnic grouping descended from Fujian immigrants who began arriving in Taiwan five centuries ago. He is a Chinese chauvinist with a murky past in the KMT dictatorship. While Lien quite skilfully stressed ‘peace’ during his visit to China, Soong stressed ethnicity: "All Taiwanese", he said, "trace their bloodlines to China". These remarks are offensive to Taiwan’s indigenous people, of Austronesian rather than Chinese descent.
Meanwhile, the DPP’s smaller alliance partner, the right-wing Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), has a racist policy towards mainlanders (ie those who arrived after 1949 and their descendents) over immigration and job quotas. Most ordinary pan-green voters choose these parties because they do not want Beijing’s dictators deciding their future, while many pan-blue voters are simply repelled by the antics of the pan-green leaders – engaging in meaningless and potentially dangerous provocations of China.
The key ingredient lacking in both Taiwan and China today is a workers’ party standing firmly for the unity of the working class, for socialist policies and complete independence from the bosses’ parties, whether blue, green or fake red. Such a party would call for a democratic socialist Taiwan and a democratic socialist China, and use this idea to capture the imagination of workers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. On the basis of socialism, through the drawing up of a democratic plan of production for the region’s resources, relations between Taiwan and China – whether in the form of independence, reunification or a new federal configuration extending to other countries in the region – could be decided on a democratic and voluntary basis.
Workers’ organisations can give no support to agreements concocted between the Chinese and Taiwanese capitalists. Of course, socialists welcome any reduction in cross-strait tensions, which can present an opportunity to break the nationalists’ grip on politics and advance the idea of a socialist alternative. But for this to happen, workers must act independently of capitalist governments and parties, forging concrete links instead between workers on both sides of the Strait. The socialist answer to the CCP-KMT talks (and any future deal involving the DPP) is ‘closer links from below’: involving workers, farmers, environmentalists, women’s rights campaigners and other groups fighting for change. There can be no permanent solution to the cross-strait issue on the basis of capitalism and imperialism. The economic, political and – in future – military scramble unfolding, as Asia’s new capitalist titans rub up against each other, opens a period of social explosions, shifting alliances and inevitable clashes. Only the working class of the region, by building its organisations across national frontiers, can offer a way forward.

Domestic slavery, Maid in Taiwan

Domestic slavery, Maid in Taiwan

Working long hours, physically and sexually abused, domestic workers have little recourse to legal protection in a system that favors brokers and their clients

By Joe Henley  /  Contributing reporter

Tue, Feb 17, 2015 - Page 12

Ruby Comida hails from the Metro Manila city of Paranaque. She is 46 years old, and like many of her fellow Pinays she smiles easily and laughs often, even when recounting dark events, and possesses a strong desire to work to better her circumstances. For her and millions of people from the Philippines, the best way they have found to help themselves and their families is to go abroad to work, to a place where jobs are more readily available, and salaries are at a level where they will be able to send some money back home each month.
This is big business in the Philippines. In 2013, there were approximately 2.3 million Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) scattered around the globe, their remittances accounting for the country’s second-largest source of foreign reserves, beating out foreign direct investment in terms of percentage of the GDP. The influx of foreign currency might be a boon to the government of the Philippines and countries in need of a relatively cheap source of labor to build infrastructure, work in factories, and provide affordable health care for graying populations. But for many overseas workers, the dream can quickly turn into a nightmare.
24 HOURS ON-CALL
Just over half a year ago, Comida paid a broker from a manpower agency in the Philippines a fee of US$1,800 to get her a job as a caretaker for the elderly in Taiwan. Like many of her fellow Filipinos working abroad, she did not have such a sum of money. So, the agency gave her a loan, to be paid back a couple of hundred dollars at a time, deducted from her monthly salary of around US$450. The pay, although only about two-thirds of the average monthly pay of a fresh college graduate in Taiwan, is still far above the roughly 466 pesos (US$10) per day minimum wage she would likely earn doing similar work in Manila.
Within her first few months in Taiwan, Comida was placed with two different employers by a local broker, Cheng Ger International Co (正格管理顧問國際有限公司), which also took a cut of the placement fee she paid to the manpower agency in her home country. The first was a pair of brothers in Taichung who ostensibly hired her to care for their aging parents. In reality, she was shuffled between their homes to do all manner of work, on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However, this was far from the worst of it.
SEXUAL ASSAULT
Though the elder brother treated her well, Comida says, the younger quickly made it known that he expected her to be his personal prostitute. Not long after her arrival at his home in late July of last year, he instructed her to join him in his bedroom. He then proceeded to put on a pornographic film, and removed his pants.
“He said, ‘You can watch. What they do, you do to me,’” Comida says.
She immediately contacted the Taiwan chapter of Migrante International, an organization that assists domestic workers in times of crisis. They in turn instructed her to call the 1955 24-hour hotline for foreign workers, a service run by the Workforce Development Agency (勞動力發展署), a branch of the Ministry of Labor, which handles complaints foreign workers may have against their employers. Eventually Comida was taken to a shelter for migrant workers in Taoyuan. For the time being, she was safe.
One and a half months later, Comida’s broker found her a new job, only to have the nightmare of sexual abuse repeat itself. Since then, she has been back living at the shelter in Taoyuan with dozens of other men and women who have all been victimized by their employers, the manpower agencies that bring them to Taiwan and the lack of any substantial labor laws that might serve to protect them.
Astonishingly, Comida has not given up hope of finding work in Taiwan that will not put her in danger of being abused. She will try again, for the third time, to land a job so that she can send money home to her teenage son so that he might have a brighter future.
“I hope and pray I can take a new employer, very nice and very kind,” she says. “I need to fight. I need to have confidence in myself. If they see I’m weak, they’ll do it to me again.”
DEPLORABLE WORKING CONDITIONS
The desire to fight for their rights has inspired Comida and a number of women from the Philippines to found their own advocacy group, Migranteng Kababaihan sa Taiwan (MKT), or Migrant Women in Taiwan, an informal organization that works to inform OFWs of their rights when it comes to their jobs, and help them fight back against a system that is largely stacked against them.
Like Comida, members all have stories of exploitation they want to share in the hope of exposing the, at times, deplorable conditions the approximately 450,000 Southeast Asian workers in Taiwan face on a daily basis.
Lerma Mendoza, 34, has also been in Taiwan for seven months. She too was placed by a broker in Taichung solely to take care of an elderly man. However, in reality her duties included farm work, cleaning two houses and cleaning and working in a factory.
Her broker, Tzoong-Tsai Manpower Consultant Co (總才人力顧問有限公司), later transferred her to Nantou, where she was assigned to care for two elderly patients, though her contract only stipulated looking after one. At this job, she was beaten by her employer, struck with a cane and bitten, she alleges. She called the 1955 hotline for assistance, but it took one month for any action to be taken. In the meantime, the abuse continued.
Finally, with the assistance of an NGO, the police were called, and Mendoza was able to go to the same shelter in Taoyuan. There she met the other women who would come to comprise the founding membership of MKT. The women currently staying at the shelter all come from different parts of the Philippines, and between them have worked in nearly every geographical region of Taiwan. All are shackled with huge debts they took on just to get to Taiwan — debts owed to manpower agencies in the Philippines and local brokers, each of which seems eager to point the finger at the other when it comes to predatory lending policies for placement or service fees.
In Mendoza’s case, she owes 120,000 pesos. When she was working, NT$13,000 of her monthly salary of just over NT$15,000 (below the minimum wage of just over NT$19,0000 per month) went toward repayment of her loan. What little remained went to her parents back home, who care for her two primary school-aged children.
LEGAL PROTECTION LACKING
How do employers get away with paying domestic helpers and caregivers below minimum wage? The answer lies in the fact that many of the workers are not covered by the Labor Standards Act, which only has laws pertaining to the hiring practices surrounding them. For foreign caregivers working in private homes, for example, there are no laws pertaining to matters such as their pay, the number of days off they should receive and so on. It’s a system, or rather the lack of one, which allows for rampant abuse.
Thinking they have come to Taiwan to better their lives, women like Mendoza quickly find that they have been pushed into a debt that, unbeknownst to them, is also in contravention of existing labor laws. In the Philippines it is newly illegal for manpower agencies to charge a placement fee that is in excess of one month of the worker’s salary abroad. In some cases, over half of this fee is paid to the agency’s counterpart in Taiwan, the brokers who place workers in factories, homes and other businesses throughout the country.
However, a law’s existence and its enforcement are two very different things. Lack of vigilant enforcement combined with the relative poverty of the workers and the absence of a substantial support network for them is why women like Comida and Mendoza are far from alone in their harrowing tales of abuse. At a gathering at Taipei Main Station on a recent Sunday afternoon, a rare day off for the migrant worker population, several came forward to share their stories.
BIZARRE STORIES
Manilyn Solis, 25, has worked for four different employers in Taiwan in the span of less than a year. One elderly male ward forced her to live in the same room with him, where he insisted that she undress in front of him. One day, as she reluctantly gave in to his repeated demands, he had a heart attack and died. The family, her broker and a representative from the Ministry of Labor blamed her for the man’s death, Solis says. Later she would be transferred by her broker illegally, without a contract in place, to Taipei. There her employer held her captive as a virtual slave. There was no pay and no food. She starved for two weeks, with nothing but water to drink, before she was able to break free.
Others who have had their pay withheld or been denied pay altogether have had to suffer the added indignity of being sued by their brokers for failure to make their monthly loan payments. After inevitably losing in unsympathetic courtrooms, they are informed that their salary will be further garnished by one-third each month until the loan is repaid in full. In addition, a penalty for non-payment is levied against them. Rather than being treated as victims and shown mercy, they are instead lumped in with regular bill dodgers.
Financial damage may be grave, but it can pale in comparison to the physical danger some of these women have had to endure. Francia Valderama, 36, was forced by her employer to eat only expired food, to the point where she was hospitalized with a stomach ulcer. Not yet covered by National Health Insurance, as she was newly arrived in the country, she then had to pay her hospital bill out of her own pocket.
Thankfully, all of these women, and more who shared their stories on that Sunday, managed to escape. However, once they have secured a new job, which they have all vowed to carry forth in doing, each of their employers will be allowed to hire a domestic helper again. None, to date, have faced anything in the way of judicial repercussions, or likely ever will.
CHANGING THE SYSTEM
One Taiwanese working to change this situation for the better is Lennon Wong (汪英達), international coordinator with the Serve the People Association (桃園縣群眾服務協會), an NGO that, among many labor-based initiatives, works to protect the rights of Southeast Asian migrant workers in Taiwan. It is he who has helped all of the aforementioned women seek refuge in the SPA shelter in Taoyuan. He doesn’t mince words when it comes to the current apparatus in place to protect this highly vulnerable population.
“The whole system is abusive and discriminatory,” he says emphatically. “I would say almost all employers of domestic helpers, they have [them do] some kind of illegal work.”
Proving that illegal work is taking place inside private homes is one of the most difficult parts of Wong’s job. Should a worker complain that they are being forced to do work outside that which is covered by their work permit, a representative from the local labor bureau will be sent to investigate. Their powers, though, are limited, Wong says.
“In reality, it’s very hard to find [evidence of an] illegal job inside the house, because you don’t have a warrant from the prosecutor, so the officer or even the police, they cannot just break in to check. They will knock on the door first. So the employer has time to prepare. It’s almost impossible,” Wong says.
So impotent are the powers of the officers in such cases that if the homeowner simply refuses to answer the door, law enforcement or labor bureau officials have no choice but to walk away.
Still, Wong and other members of various NGOs working around Taiwan have managed to get many workers free of exploitative circumstances to take them to one of about 15 shelters around the country. Once they are at the SPA shelter, the first thing Wong encourages Filipino workers to do is apply for a refund of the service fee they were illegally charged. But there are obstacles in doing this as well, he says.
HARASSMENT
Workers can apply for the refund at the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO), the de facto embassy, but the documents required include an Alien Resident Certificate and passport, which are often held illegally by employers. What’s more, workers applying for a refund have to do so in person — difficult to accomplish if you’re still working and don’t get any days off. Even if they do manage to apply, MECO will contact the manpower agency in the Philippines, who in turn will contact the worker’s broker in Taiwan, opening up the worker to all manner of harassment, Wong says.
Though messages were left with several such brokers seeking comment for this story, including Tzoong-Tsai Manpower Consultant Co, Great Enterprise Manpower Co (格瑞特興業有限公司) and Cheng Ger International Co, all declined. When their counterparts at Filipino manpower agencies call regarding worker complaints, however, they seem far more inclined to speak, if only to level threats at their clients.
“They will say: ‘You’d better cancel this [complaint] or you’ll be put on the blacklist, and then you’ll never be able to go abroad to work,’” Wong says.
There are even problems with the 1955 hotline, Wong says. The hotline is actually outsourced by the government to a private company, and staffed by little-trained foreign spouses who at times discourage callers from registering a formal complaint rather than assist them in doing so.
“Sometimes they say, ‘Just be patient. You came to Taiwan to work, to earn money. Don’t complain so much.’ Most of the time they don’t do anything.”
So ineffectual is the hotline that it is often the SPA that ends up insisting that a case be filed with the labor ministry, and a formal investigation be conducted. So it’s not surprising that groups such as MKT are emerging. Workers are now seeking to put at least some power back in their own hands.
‘ONE BILLION RISING’
One of the ways they’ll demonstrate their resolve as at the One Billion Rising event in Taipei on Sunday, a gathering that seeks to highlight the exploitation of female migrant workers around the world, and hopes to serve as a vehicle for policy change that will see migrant workers both male and female better protected. The event, which will be a kind of dancing demonstration, will take place from 1:30pm to 5pm at Taipei Main Station, and has been organized by the Taiwan Chapter of Migrante International and Migranteng Ilonggo.
Though the MKT has been shut out of the organizational aspect of the event this year in what appears to be a bit of in-fighting between groups that, in the end, are working toward the same goal, the ladies of MKT will be out in force to show their support. In spite of their experiences, to a woman they maintain a sense of optimism that things will get better.
“I have hope,” Comida says, echoing the sentiments of her fellow MKT members. “I know not all Taiwanese are the same.”

Ministry of Labor fines airlines for overworking staff

Ministry of Labor fines airlines for overworking staff

By Lii Wen  /  Staff reporter

Tue, Feb 17, 2015 - Page 4

Nine airlines have been fined for violating labor regulations since early this month after the Ministry of Labor launched a round of inspections directed at protecting the working conditions of flight personnel.
According to a statement issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, TransAsia and China Airlines were fined for violating labor regulations capping working hours at 12 per day.
The ministry launched inspections of the nation’s airlines following the crash of TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 on Feb. 4, which prompted questions about the working hours of the flight personnel and whether they were exhausted from overwork.
Out of a total of 15 airlines in the nation, nine companies offer passenger flights and the remaining six specialize in cargo transport or other services.
Other airlines were fined for violations such as failing to provide employee attendance records or failure to hold labor-management meetings.
The companies have been subject to fines between NT$20,000 to NT$300,000 by local labor departments around the nation, the ministry said.
The ministry announced it would soon conduct further labor inspections of the 34 foreign airline companies with operations in Taiwan.
Increased labor inspections of transportation and retail industries are set to take place during the Lunar New Year holiday, which begins on Thursday, the administration said.
The working conditions of flight personnel received significant media attention after China Airlines employees launched a string of protests over the size of their year-end bonuses and accused the company of forcing them to endure long hours and harsh working conditions.
The issue received heightened media scrutiny after the TransAsia crash, when it was revealed that the flight’s pilot had already flown to Kinmen once on the same day.
In response, China Airlines said that working hours for the aviation industry often exceed limits as a result of long overseas flights, adding that the company offers its employees NT$1,000 in compensation for hours worked in excess of the 12-hour cap.
TransAsia airlines said the company complied with standards set by the Civic Aeronautics Administration, adding that the ministry’s inspections employed different calculation methods from those set by the company.

Migrant workers enjoy New Year activities

Migrant workers enjoy New Year activities

By Tsai Tsung-hsun and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Tue, Feb 17, 2015 - Page 3

Many migrant workers have said that they prefer the Taiwanese style of celebrating the Lunar New Year holidays: days off, receiving hong bao (紅包, red envelopes filled with money) and a handsome feast.
Statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior this month showed there were 552,000 foreign workers in Taiwan as of the end of last year.
Migrant workers account for almost 70 percent of the 800,000 foreign nationals — excluding Chinese — living in Taiwan. They are currently restricted to employment as industrial laborers, domestic caretakers and maritime workers.
The report shows that 41.6 percent are from Indonesia, 27.3 percent from Vietnam and 20.2 percent from the Philippines.
Several factory owners said they have arranged for trips for their migrant workers during the Lunar New Year holidays.
Some employers said they would pay for all expenses for a two-to-three-day trip, or take their workers out for a day trip and a big meal; but some employees opt to spend the holidays with friends from their own countries, usually spending time in KTVs or going out to theme parks.
According to one Thai worker nicknamed A-tung (阿東), the owner of his factory usually treats all his foreign laborers to a sumptuous Lunar New Year’s Eve meal featuring Thai food and hands out good-sized hong bao.
“Lunar New Year has become my favorite holiday aside from [Thai New Year’s Day] Songkran Festival,” A-tung said.
Many who work as family caretakers said they might not get a vacation during the holiday, but some said their employers would let them take one or two days off because so many family members visit over the Lunar New Year.
An employment brokerage staffer nicknamed A-fen (阿芬) said she would usually negotiate with families hiring foreigners to work as domestic caretakers to give them Lunar New Year’s Day and the next day off, and most of her clients are amenable.
A-fen added that she would also arrange for the transportation and get-together for meals for the foreign laborers, saying that sometimes the clients also chipped in to help pay for the meals.
A-chin (阿金), an Indonesian caretaker who has been in Taiwan for more than seven years, said her employer has a large family, although she is usually left alone with her employer’s father, who suffers from mild dementia, and mother, who has mobility problems. However, during the Lunar New Year holidays, the house is filled with more than 10 people and she enjoys the festive atmosphere very much, she said.
“As I also take very good care of both my employer’s father and mother, my employer is very nice to me,” she said, adding that not only does she not have to cook the family meal on Lunar New Year’s eve, she does not have to wash the dishes afterwards.
She said she receives several hong bao every year from her employer, including one year when she received 12.
“Some of my happiest times have been the Lunar New Year’s holidays that I have spent in Taiwan,” she said.