Taiwan’s high-tech companies are the product of a special type of labor system that has its roots firmly in the past. They provide welfare with a patriarchal mentality, but lower wages, suppress workers’ right of association and ask for preferential rental taxes to accumulate company capital.
Such policies create an environment which denies Taiwanese workers basic human rights.
The decision by so many Foxconn employees to commit suicide is not merely an issue of personal psychological problems. Neither hiring monks to bring benediction to the factory nor bringing in 2,000 mental-health counselors will solve the conflict between workers and the management.
The only solution to this dilemma is to allow dialogue on an equal footing between workers and management through the establishment of labor unions.
Wang Hong-zen is president of the Graduate Institute of Sociology at National Sun Yat-sen University.
TRANSLATED BY WU TAIJING
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