Also, I found a documentary about this topic made by Alex Wolfgram, who studied master program in Taiwan, and this issue is his topic. He did not want the issue to be forgotten by people after his graduation, so he and his friend made this video in 2014. I will put the YouTube video below the article.
I may make some mistakes. If you find that, please feel free to leave message to me. :-)
The plight of foreign labor in Taiwan
The plight of foreign labor in Taiwan
Bad environment for foreign labor is one of the most important issues in Taiwan. There are more than 1 million people from around the world working in Taiwan. Foreign labor who has a certain profession, termed “skilled labor”, is around 450,000; while foreign labor who is working in productive industry or social-welfare and has already been over 600,000, which is even more than the population of the Taiwanese aborigine (Ministry of Labor, 2016). Most of the white-collar foreign labors with certain profession are from Japan (23.4%) and U.S. (17.3%), and most of the blue-collar foreign labors are from Indonesia (39.3%), Vietnam (29.0%), and Philippine (22.0%) (Ministry of Labor, 2016). In a country that has a severe labor dispute and unrest, blue-collar foreign labor in Taiwan especially has worse condition. In comparison with white-collar foreign workers who have more political or economic influence, blue-collar foreign workers often have a bad working environment, including exploitation and maltreatment (You-Lian Sun, 2014). This is a long-lasting issue which accumulates lots of dissatisfaction and currently resulted in several protests in Taiwan.
As Xiu-Lian Chen pointed out in the PTS news network article on October 7, 2016, the source of the bad environment is due to the stereotypes and discrimination. When mentioning the “foreigner (外國人)”, an image of a white, tall, blonde hair man or woman will pop up in the mind of Taiwanese. However, when the Taiwanese mention the “foreigner labor (外籍勞工)”, they will think of the south-eastern Asians who is doing a physical job and is darker-skin, lazy, dirty, or want to steal money from employer etc. In this case, the south-eastern Asian foreign labors are even more difficult to have the public’s attention to their unequal treatment. On the contrary, most of the news about blue-collar foreign labors in Taiwan are their negative news, such as escape from the employer which reinforce the discrimination toward those blue-collar foreign labors.
In Taiwan, the limitation of the blue-collar foreign labors is more than the white-collar ones. First, most of the foreign labor find a job in Taiwan through the labor agency or the broker, but the situation for two groups of labors differs a lot. In most cases, white-collar labors only pay once for the broker fee, but the blue-collar labor will be exploited to pay the fee which is a lot higher than the one paid by the white-collar in annual basis (Wolfgram, 2012). Secondly, according to the law, the blue-collar labors have to leave Taiwan 1 day after the 3-years contract finished, and this is believed to profit the broker and gain pain to the foreign labor because they have to pay the fee again if they want to find next job in Taiwan. These result in a huge amount of the blue-collar foreign labor run away, and no white-collar foreign labor does so in contrast (Wolfgram, 2012). The unequal treatment between different classes of people thus places more oppression onto those who are already disadvantaged in the society.
The environment of the blue-collar foreign labor also has a gender difference. Most of the male worker is doing the physical job which is spurned by the Taiwanese, such as construction, productive industry, and fishing. On the other hand, the Taiwanese employers hire a female worker as a caregiver for helping the family take care of their ill family member and deal with the house affairs, which reflects the stereotype of the Taiwanese. Male workers work in the public space which can be easily seen by the public and live in the dormitory provided by the employer, but the female workers work and live in their employer’s house. Therefore, the condition makes male workers more easily to be noticed by the main news media, in the meanwhile, female workers are not easy to gain the attention. In 2005, a severe riot happened during the construction of the Kaohsiung mass rapid transit (MRT). The protesting Thai labors argued about the bad working condition, including extremely expensive food inside the dorm, super-high broker fee per month, mobile phone forbidden, and a very limited amount of toilet and water heater for shower. As Kuo-Kan Hsu noted in the udn news article on August 28, 2005, the investigation team even described the dorm as the “internment”. After the event and a long-time discussion, the government finally modify the law, “Labor Standards Act” (勞動基準法), to include the blue-collar foreign labor who works in a physical job, and thus making all their destiny the difference. Nowadays, the working hour and salary of men are protected by the law, but the women are still struggling with the bad working environment. For example, because of the working and living place are the same in the employer’s house, when the family needs their help, the caregiver cannot refuse to work even in the midnight, resulted in an extreme high working hour. This is an unequal power situation between employer and caregiver, which make them very prone to be threatened by the employer, and unfortunately not easy to seek help. Also, the caregivers have problems of half lower salary than the local worker, and abuse or sexual harassment by the employer, with only limited protection from the law and the government (Wolfgram, 2012).
Despite there are still a lot of unfriendly events, several NGOs keep fighting for their right to have equal and dignity for more than a decade, and more and more blue-collar foreign labor take the streets to protest with them. In the past, the caregiver could not change the employer by personal will even if the employer was mean and cruel, which made them being treated like a servant or slave. Owing to the protest every year pursuing their right, the foreign female caregivers now have more freedom to select their employer despite the fact that it has not been totally liberalized yet. The protests keep demanding for the holiday in 2011, for the inclusion into the Labor Standards Act in 2012-2015, and for the abolishment of going abroad 1 day after every 3-years contract in 2015-2016. Although not all the protest successfully forced the politicians to modify the law, especially failed to include them into the Labor Standards Law, the NGOs proposed another special law, “the Household Service Act”, which can regulate the content of the contract between worker and employer very accurately, and now the law is on the negotiation list of the legislators.
In spite of the slow pace of improvement, more and more Taiwanese pay attention to their issues and support them with action. The third “Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants”, which is a platform for immigrants to express their love and hate, joy and pain toward and inside Taiwan, was held this year. We can read a lot of different aspect of Taiwan from the viewpoint of immigrants, not only their own misery but encouraging stories, but also lots of attentive observations toward Taiwan. Also, there are more and more bookstores which aimed at the south-eastern Asian people provide books and magazines in their native language, and in the meantime, the books in Mandarin give the Taiwanese a way to have more insight into the foreign labor and their culture. By introducing their culture to the public and making the public more familiar with them, the discrimination to the foreign blue-collar will hopefully be eliminated gradually.
In comparison with critiques to the muslin’s Eid al-Fitr (Feast of Breaking the Fast) several years ago, this year the public opinion and news media mentioned the Indonesian people gathering in the Taipei main station to celebrate the day with more mild and neutral words. The government also started to help organize the route for walking and talking in the station and provided service and guidance in Mandarin and Indonesian. Although the foreign labor still facing the inequality, their situation starts getting better. They are once nobody in the society, but now is somebody important to Taiwan. There is still a long way to go, but the sunlight of hope has started to shed on them.
Reference
Alex Wolfgram (2012), “I Have it “Maid” in Taiwan: Runaway Filipino Domestic Household Workers and Taiwan’s Foreign Labor Policy”.
Ministry of Labor (2016), “外籍勞工與專業人員統計National Statistics of Foreign Workers,” Taipei, September 20, 2016, accessed October 10, 2016, URL: http://statdb.mol.gov.tw/html/mon/i0120020620.htm.
You-Lian Sun, “Movement and Exploitation: The Right of Foreign Labors in Taiwan”, Taiwan International Law Quarterly 11.2 (2014): 87-105.
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