Labor officials on Monday said that while the government agreed in principle with the measures proposed by the Philippine government to protect its workers in Taiwan, it warned Manila against interfering with Taiwan's internal administration or encroaching upon its administrative sovereignty.
The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) officials were responding to media reports that the Philippine government will implement a package of measures from March, which include demands that Tai-wanese employers provide their Philippine household servants or helpers with a eparate room for sleeping and that Philippine workers intending to change employers should apply for approval with the Philippine representative office in Taiwan.
In the process, the media reports said, the Philippine government will also require Taiwanese employers to explain why the Philippine workers were changing employers.
The measure aims to put a stop to deceptive labor practices, such as Philippine workers arriving and finding themselves working at families or companies and under conditions that are different from those stated in their contract.
Council officials asserted, how-ever, that the Taiwanese government had spared no effort in protecting the rights and interests of foreign people working in the country, adding that the council respected the proposed measure demanding employers provide a separate sleeping room for their Philippine household or family helpers.
However, the officials said that the council could not agree to the proposed measures requiring local employers to answer the Philippine representative office's questions and Filipino workers applying to its representative office for approval before changing employers.
Such measures would infringe upon Taiwan's administrative sovereignty, the officials said, adding that it was an international norm and custom that the labor importing country's legal provisions should be respected in handling labor disputes.
Stressing that the CLA, as well as city and county governments around Taiwan, have proper mechanisms in place to handle labor disputes, including change of employers, the officials said that the Philippine government should not try to interfere with Taiwan's labor administration or exercise of its administrative sovereignty.
Since labor rights protection is a universal value and one of Taiwan's top policy guidelines, the officials said that the council would ask Taiwan's representative office in Manila to gain a better understanding of details of the proposed measures and to negotiate with the Philippine agencies.
According to a US State Department report, Taiwan employs more than 350,000 workers from Southeast Asian nations, including the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Taiwan was placed under the Tier 2 Watch List of the State Department's 2006 Trafficking in Persons report released last June for "its failure to show evidence of increasing efforts over the past year to address trafficking, despite ample re-sources to do so, particularly the serious level of forced labor and sexual servitude among legally migrating Southeast Asian contract workers."
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater