Following a series of suicides by Chinese employees at the Foxconn (富士康) plant in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, more than 150 academics and researchers yesterday called for an end to sweatshops and urged the government to stop offering subsidies and economic incentives to companies like Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密).
The petition, which was initiated on June 6 by Lin Thung-hong (林宗弘), associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, and Daniel Yang (楊友仁), associate professor of sociology at Tunghai University, said comments by Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) that he “hopes everyone will give [Hon Hai chairman] Terry Gou (郭台銘) encouragement” was a form of complicity in corporate exploitation of human labor and encouraged Taiwanese companies to violate labor rights.
Six professors and researchers from the fields of sociology, public policy and others yesterday attended a press conference to petition the government not to turn a blind eye to violations of workers’ rights to avoid harming Taiwan’s international image in the name of economic growth.
“When Yahoo provided its lists [of personal information] to the Chinese government, they were grilled at a congressional hearing [in the US],” Lin said. “However, throughout the entire Foxconn crisis, the people who acted with the most indifference are Taiwanese government officials.”
Lin said Foxconn’s treatment of its workers constituted a form of financial crime, but rather than getting punished, the government is offering subsidies and favorable policies to allow Hon Hai to bring its production facilities back to Taiwan and continue to expand its operations.
Huang Te-pei (黃德北), professor and director at Shih Hsin University’s Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies, called Gou “the shame of Taiwan” and said that all advertisements that feature endorsements by Gou should be taken down.
“The Taiwanese government should not encourage Hon Hai to bring its factories back to Taiwan, along with all the social problems associated with its treatment of its workers,” Huang said.
He said that even though Hon Hai had announced wage increases in response to the suicides at the Shenzhen plant, the root of the problem — the almost perpetual overtime that workers must put in if they want to earn enough to support the high cost of living in the city — persists.
Consumers should boycott goods made by companies like Apple, which buys Hon Hai’s products and indirectly contributes to workers’ exploitation, until Apple’s suppliers can make significant improvements in labor conditions, the petition said.
Academics also said that Hon Hai should open its factories to independent academics so they could conduct investigations into working conditions there.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
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