Tungnan University yesterday apologized to the public for advertising its students from South and Southeast Asia as cheaper than migrant workers and ideal for doing “filthy, dangerous shift work” in an internship program plan it sent to companies.
In the eight-page plan, which was circulated on the Internet on Wednesday, the school details all the “perks” companies could obtain from offering internships to its foreign students.
Companies could save at least NT$3,628 per month per worker by not paying the expenses required to hire migrant workers, including fees for labor insurance, health insurance and the employment security fund, it said.
Screen grab from the Internet
Furthermore, restrictions on company capital, industry type and quotas of migrant workers do not apply to students, it said.
The students would work 20 hours a week in their first year and 40 hours a week in the second, it said, adding that if overtime was required, it could be paid for in the form of a scholarship.
Foreign students “like working overtime” and do not follow the five-day workweek, it said, adding that they require “only the minimum wage.”
They could be assigned to “taxing, filthy and dangerous shift work” and are “highly cooperative,” it said.
In a statement, the school admitted sending the document to a trade union in May last year.
It apologized for the “inappropriate words” used to describe foreign students when comparing them with migrant workers.
The wording was a “mistake” and “misleading,” it said.
All of the school’s internship programs are carried out in line with the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) and teachers regularly visit the students at their internships to ensure their work meet their class requirements, it said.
Tungnan University vice president Tung I-Wu (董益吾) on Wednesday said the plan was “inappropriate and not in line with the Ministry of Education’s regulations,” the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) reported.
The plan has been replaced with another that is in line with government regulations, he added.
The ministry said that it has launched an investigation into the school’s internship program.
Of the 25 students on the program, 18 are working at the Grand Hotel Taipei, three are at the HiONE Holiday Hotel and four are at Dim Dim Sum, it said, adding that none of the internships have been ongoing for more than a week.
The school would be severely punished if it is found to have violated students’ rights, it added.
The ministry would require universities and colleges nationwide to review the management of their foreign students and examine their work situations within a month, it said.
“The document shows that the New Southbound Policy internship programs promoted by the ministry has been used as a backdoor for recruiting cheap foreign workers,” the Union of Private Educators said in a statement.
The education and labor ministries should immediately close any loopholes in the regulations to prevent universities from violating students’ rights and disrupting the labor market, it said.
Police should also investigate whether Tungnan University has extracted commissions from students or the companies offering the internships, it added.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
US PUBLICATION: The results indicated a change in attitude after a 2023 survey showed 55 percent supported full-scale war to achieve unification, the report said More than half of Chinese were against the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, a survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University found. The survey results, which were released on Wednesday in a report titled “Sovereignty, Security, & US-China Relations: Chinese Public Opinion,” showed that 55.1 percent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances,” while 24.5 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed with the statement. The results indicated a change in attitude after a survey published in “Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
Four former Hong Kong opposition lawmakers jailed in the territory’s largest national security case were released yesterday after more than four years in prison, the first among dozens convicted last year to regain their freedom. Former legislators Claudia Mo (毛孟靜), Jeremy Tam (譚文豪), Kwok Ka-ki (郭家麒) and Gary Fan (范國威) were part of a group of 47 public figures — including some of Hong Kong’s best-known democracy advocates — who were charged with subversion in 2021 for holding an informal primary election. The case fell under a National Security Law imposed on the territory by Beijng, and drew international condemnation and warnings