The Taiwan initiative of the IWW has been
coming to terms with the political situation in Taiwan. There is a tug-of-war
here between Chinese and American influences that captivates the youth of the
island and distracts them from the basic problem: a paucity of good jobs, all
at low pay, all without union protection.
Organizing for the One Big
Union in Taiwan has been an education since I was made a delegate in September
2013 and entrusted with the goal of starting a Regional Organizing Committee
(ROC) in Asia based in Taiwan.
With referrals From GST Sam,
I sought out and met two young college students who were signed up by the
Perth, Australia branch. In addition, I was referred to an interested education
worker in Northern Taiwan who referred me to another interested worker in
Southern Taiwan. I traveled from my central location to meet both men and issue
Red Cards. In addition, I contacted an activist friend I had met ten years
earlier who introduced me to student activists that worked in his café. They were
not interested in starting a union and the two activists from Perth didn’t show
their Red Cards. The education workers paid one month dues and ceased contact.
The organizing campaign reached a dead end.
In Taiwan, despite low wages
stuck at a sixteen year old rate, overwork, and unsafe working conditions, both
older and younger workers are reluctant to organize into unions. The older
workers lived through a brutal thirty-seven years of martial law from the U.S.
supported dictatorship. The younger workers grew up with neo-liberal two-party
market capitalism where independent unions were restricted. The ruling class
embedded sweetheart unions with special privileges as a way of controlling the
work force, stifling labor unrest, and insuring voter sympathy.
Student activism falls into
two basic camps; pro-China or laissez-faire U.S. influence. There is a small
group of student activists leaning towards Taiwan independence. Unionism equals
radical communism because of fear-mongering from propaganda against a China
take-over or U.S. anti-worker capitalism. Pro-China student activists condemn
the WTO and sweatshops but generally don’t see clear to support union
solidarity as a remedy. Other students have bourgeois tendencies.
Where does that leave the
pro-union anarcho-syndicalism of the IWW in Taiwan? Even less than the IWW in
the U.S. has been able to influence the Occupy Wall Street movement because of
the split camps of pro-China and pro U.S. For many bad reasons, old and young
oppressed workers in Taiwan cannot or will not make the connection that
organizing themselves in their workplace is the only way to start addressing
the dilemma of top-down management.
A delegate for the IWW should
organize with his fellow workers his or her own work place. As a teacher of
English as a Foreign Language, I am faced with the handicap of organizing a
transient workforce of ex-pats who rarely stay on the job long enough to
organize. Another problem I have as a delegate of the IWW in Taiwan is that I
am a sixty-year-old immigrant of European descent; there is prejudice and
suspicion about me. Even though I speak Mandarin Chinese, I am still seen as an
outsider by most Taiwanese. An organizer who is indigenous to Taiwan stands a
better chance of being successful here. There are many handicaps we must
overcome before a Regional Organizing Committee can take hold in Taiwan and
Asia.
 |
| Speaking at Wisteria Tea House in Taipei workshop:"How to Start a Teachers' Union." |
It will be very difficult to
succeed in promoting organizing workers in Taiwan and Asia without indigenous
delegates. To address the issues inhibiting union solidarity and organizing in
Taiwan, your delegate proposes to do the following:
1.
Find a Taiwanese group or political party to bore into
that will appreciate the goals of the IWW union organizing effort.
2.
Continue promoting the OBU on the internet in www.taIWWan.blogspot.tw digest of worker actions in
Taiwan. I have received over eight thousand hits worldwide.
3.
Continue the community Facebook page of taIWWan. We have
over eight hundred friends supporting our efforts worldwide.
4.
Post to local Facebook pages articles that will raise the
consciousness of English speaking workers here in hopes of building a support group
to form an ROC.
5.
Continue offering free workshops on “How to Start Your Own
Union.”
6.
Continue offering a free progressive lending library to
the community.
8.
Keep GHQ informed of developments in Taiwan IWW
organizing, receive and follow up on referrals from GHQ of fellow workers in
the Asian/Taiwan theatre.
Most importantly to our
organizing campaign here is finding indigenous fellow workers willing to organize
themselves and fellow workers into a union with the IWW. As it is illegal to
organize a union without thirty workers in a shop and approval from the
Ministry of Labor, clandestine union organizing campaigns must be stressed.
Your delegate must be able to meet indigenous workers with fire and guts to
improve their working conditions and compensation at the grass root level and
to grieve unfair labor practices. I believe this can be done.
The following issues act as
obstructions to union organizing in Taiwan:
1.
Minimum wage is to low; there is no living-wage.
2.
Tipping is prohibited or collected and kept by the boss.
3.
Overtime work is not compensated in family businesses;
rules are not enforced.
4.
Year-end bonuses
are used to entrap workers into compliance with unfair workplace conditions.
5.
Only government approved unions may be organized.
6.
A workplace must have at least 30 employees to file to
unionize.
7.
Hooligans harass workers attempting to unionize.
8.
Ex-pat worker community is transient; foreigners may not
unionize or participate in public demonstrations or face deportation.
At the end of 2013, it seemed possible
to establish an R.O.C. in Taiwan; I had signed up two American residents, we
had the two Taiwanese members who had joined in Perth, Australia and they had
brought two more interested activists to the two monthly meetings I held in
Taipei. In addition, I had visited with my old activist friend and met the
college student activists who were working at his café. Then reality hit. The
two Taiwanese who joined in Perth never showed their Red Cards or paid dues.
Their comrades were in a China unification group and not interested in grass
root organizing. My old activist friend was working for the neo-liberal
Democratic Progress Party (DPP) and not interested in labor union organizing,
either. By February 2014, it became clear to me that forming an R.O.C. wasn’t
going to be that easy.
In March, 2014, hundreds of students and
demonstrators occupied the legislative chamber in Taipei. One of the leading
speakers was the young man introduced to me by my old activist friend a few
months earlier. As thousands of supporters gathered on the streets outside the
chamber, the leaders of the so-called “Sunflower Movement” outlined their
demands:
“We do not want to see young people
still living on a NT$22,000 salary (Note: *32 Taiwan dollars = $1.00 U.S. dollar)10 years from now,” the statement read. “In
the future, Taiwanese small and medium-sized enterprises will face challenges from
competition with Chinese-invested companies that have abundant capital and use
vertically integrated business models,” it said. The demonstration was against
a Taiwan-China service trade pact.
The protesters ignored the
exploitation already existent in Taiwan for sixty-seven years since the U.S.
began to use the KMT’s “Free China” as a puppet for business and military
interests. The DPP used the takeover as a political tool to condemn the ruling
class detente with the Chinese government and re-gain power in the Nov. 2014
election.
This ends my report of IWW and labor
activities in Taiwan in 2014.
For One Big Union,
Solidarity,
David Temple
# 347367
Del. # 13-3235
