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CLA revises foreign worker rules

The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) yesterday announced that decreases in maximum ceilings on foreign workers employable by large manufacturers -- which take effect each time they recruit such workers -- will be reduced from 10 to 5 percent when one foreign worker is recruited for every three Taiwanese over and above minimum levels of Taiwanese.

Those levels will be set for each company according to its size.

The CLA said the new policy is intended to provide incentives for major manufacturing companies to hire locals and is expected to create about 6,856 to 24,217 jobs for local workers annually.

"When we were reviewing the policy of reducing the number of foreign workers, we realized that it didn't help locals find jobs," said Kuo Fang-yu (郭芳煜), director-general of the Council's Employment and Vocational Training Administration, at a press conference yesterday.

"So we decided we could offer some benefits to major manufacturing companies through hiring local workers, now that we've successfully reduced the number of foreign workers by 21,307 over the past two years," Kuo said.

Under a system instituted in September 2000, major manufacturing companies are given a maximum ceiling for the number of immigrant workers they may employ. The ceiling depends on the scale of their business, and is reduced by 10 percent each time they apply for authorization to recruit new foreign workers.

Moreover, the number of foreign workers in any of these industries is not allowed to exceed 30 percent of the total number of local workers. If this percentage is exceeded, a company not only has to give up the foreign workers that it hired that exceeded the ratio, it also must cut its foreign work force by an additional 10 percent.

The ceiling for the number of foreign workers for large public engineering projects has been fixed at 30 percent of the total of estimated workers needed for a construction project.

Yesterday's announcement will lower the ceiling reduction that is applied each time a company recruits new foreign workers to five percent in the event the company meets the new criteria.

Kuo said the CLA believes the new policy will offer more flexibility to employers and help reduce unemployment.

Employers that seek to turn the new policy to their advantage by hiring local employees only to lay them off after meeting the ceiling for foreign employees will be barred from hiring foreign workers within two years and fined between NT$20,000 to NT$100,000.

Taiwan currently has about 300,000 foreign workers.
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