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Letter: Days off for foreign workers

I welcome Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) division chief Tsai Meng-liang's (蔡孟良) pronouncement that local employers will be fined and even deprived of the right to hire foreign workers if they are found to have violated labor laws or contracts, including by not providing regular days off to immigrant workers.

This would prevent employers from being able to send home foreign workers who stand up for their rights when a company violates them.

I suggest that the CLA make this an official policy and circulate it to the local labor bureaus and the labor representatives here from other countries, which handle such complaints.

I would just like to clarify what Tsai meant when he said that "employment and management of foreign workers must comply with existing law and working contracts."

In an official letter by the CLA sent to us on July 4 last year, the labor body said that side agreements amending the original employment contract signed in the Philippines would be considered valid and binding.

This also pertains to the guaranteed days off provision in such a contract.

This would contradict the CLA's own admission in the same letter that days off are guaranteed in Article 7 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UN says that such rights are not granted to workers by governments or employers -- they are basic, inalienable human rights.

The CLA needs to take a clearer stance on this issue, so that the 81 percent of Filipina caretakers and domestic workers who have their days off unfairly limited or receive no days off at all will not be deprived of their inalienable human rights.

AAron Ceradoy
Taipei
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