The Council for Labor Affairs' Department of Labor Standards is currently looking into the possibility of deducting living expenses directly from foreign workers' monthly salaries, officials said yesterday.
Until now, expenses like food and rent were covered by employers.
While no decision has yet been made, the labor standards office is set to begin negotiations with the labor departments of Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines as soon as July, an official said.
According to the director of the council's labor standards department, Chen Shen-hsien (
What employers wish to do is gain the right to automatically deduct fees for living expenses, food and rent from employees monthly salary.
"Many Taiwanese employers have asked us to modify the fundamental salary requirements, but that's not fair to foreigner workers. To help solve the problem, we are going to try to convince representative countries to accept the proposal of workers paying their living expenses," Chen said.
A representative from Thailand's labor affairs department in Taiwan, which is scheduled to meet with CLA officials on July 2, said they have not yet decided whether they will accept the deal or not.
"We're not opposed to accepting the proposal, but we would like to ask the government whether foreigner workers are actually capable of making such payments.
"Many Taiwanese employers take commissions from brokers when they hire foreign workers," said the Thailand representative.
Currently there are some 140,000 foreign workers in Taiwan.
At present, local employers have to pay NT$2,500 to NT$4,000 in boarding and accommodation fees for each legally hired foreign worker per month, in addition to paying the minimum wage of NT$15,840.
Thailand is the largest source of foreign workers employed by the local manufacturing and construction industries.
Under the proposed changes, the sources said, local employers would save an estimated NT$350 million in salary payments each month.
Past experience, however, does not seem to indicate that such terms have a strong chance of getting excepted. Since 1998, the department has been trying to negotiate this position of employers with representatives from foreign workers' countries.
Representatives from the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam said yesterday that they had not heard about the proposal and that their countries' labor departments would make any decision if it was an option to be considered.
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