Several foreign fishermen have approached the Ministry of Labor complaining that they were being exploited by their employers and agents. The fishermen said that they were not given enough to eat, they did not get enough sleep and their agents often made deductions from their wages for spurious reasons.
After all this, they were usually left with less than NT$10,000 per month on which to survive. This has been going on for a long time, yet the authorities’ response has been to turn a blind eye and not to do anything to address the situation, so the problems only get worse.
For instance, the ministry has asked the employers to abide by its guidelines on foreign-worker management, asking them to provide adequate accommodation for their foreign workers, but it has failed to enforce these guidelines, leaving many foreign fishermen to live in substandard conditions that are cramped and rudimentary.
To guarantee these workers their most basic human rights, the authorities should demand that shipowners make speedy improvements to meet the minimum health and safety standards. In addition to conditions onboard, wages, labor insurance, food and accommodation, much still needs to be done. The authorities should launch a comprehensive review and make necessary improvements to prevent the nation from being the focus of criticism from the international media.
The poor working conditions, low wages, long work hours and high incidence of accidents, which are about 7.6 times higher on fishing vessels than in other workplaces, have turned Taiwanese off pursuing fishing careers, leading to severe labor shortages. Employers can pay foreign fishermen significantly less than they would have to pay Taiwanese, so shipowners are inclined to hire foreign fishermen.
Government statistics show that Taiwan’s offshore fisheries employ as many as 19,000 foreign laborers, mainly from Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. These foreign fishermen comprise the majority of the cheap labor fueling Taiwan’s fisheries industry, with Taiwanese accounting for less than 10 percent of the workforce.
Recently, a rumor started circulating that the Indonesian government was set to temporarily limit the number of their fishermen working overseas, something that gave Taiwanese shipowners and authorities a fright. Fortunately, it was proven to be just a rumor.
In the past, developing countries, such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, had large surpluses of cheap labor, given their fast population growth and weak economies, leading them to develop a national policy of encouraging workers to find employment overseas. This helped them kill two birds with one stone: bringing down domestic unemployment and gaining large amounts of foreign revenue.
However, as their economies improved and job opportunities and wages increased, they adjusted this policy accordingly. If they limit the number of workers coming to Taiwan, there will be nobody to man the fishing vessels. Shipowners will be beached.
However, foreign labor is not all good news; language barriers and cultural and religious differences, together with different fishing techniques and varying individual abilities to adjust to new environments, all have the potential to cause conflict between foreign and domestic workers. It is not unheard of for these conflicts to have fatal consequences. It is no wonder, then, that Taiwanese workers are reluctant to set foot aboard a fishing vessel. The government should set up communication channels and a mechanism for handling complaints and conflict resolution.
Employing large numbers of foreign fishermen is a double-edged sword. In the short term, it can address labor shortage problems for fishing vessels and increase shipowners’ profits. However, it also comes with potential risks. For example, there is a limit to how long foreign workers can stay in Taiwan, and the turnover is high, which does little good to Taiwan’s fishery management, talent cultivation, skills improvement and so on.
In the long run, it does not promote skill upgrades and the sustainable development of Taiwanese fisheries either. Hence, in addition to improving the wage structure and the living and working conditions for foreign fishermen, the government should also take measures to review current fishery policies and introduce structural changes to the industry. It should also make use of investigation and analysis of offshore fishing resources to decide the optimum size of the industry.
By developing skills and equipment to reduce the number of workers required, adjusting benefits and wages, improving working conditions, providing basic staff training and the like, the long-term problem of the shortage of labor within Taiwan’s fishing industry can hopefully be fixed.
Lee Wu-chung is a professor of agricultural economics and a former director of the Yunlin County Department of Agriculture.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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