Immigrant domestic helpers, caregivers and activists gathered in front of the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) yesterday to present a petition calling for their inclusion in the Labor Standards Law (勞動基準法).
Because home workers, such as caregivers for the elderly and children, are not covered by the Labor Standards Law, neither foreign nor Taiwanese home workers would see their wages affected by the expected minimum wage hike.
This is unfair, said advocates from the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants, Migrant International and others yesterday.
"Home workers are expected to work like robots whenever they are needed and at all hours," said Wong Ying-dah (汪英達) of the Taiwan Migrants' Forum. "Yet their rights are unprotected due to their exclusion from the Labor Standards Law."
No officials were on hand to accept the petition because it dealt with a known issue that the group had already informed the Council about in advance, CLA official Tsai Meng-liang (蔡孟良) told the Taipei Times by phone yesterday. Tsai is in charge of foreign labor issues at the CLA's Bureau of Employment and Vocational Training.
Tsai said that the reason the Labor Standards Law is not applicable to caregivers and domestic helpers is because they do not follow a standard workday.
"Nobody would be able to afford caretakers if they had to pay them overtime," Tsai said.
"However, the CLA is looking into ways to protect the rights of these workers," he said. "Partial inclusion in the Labor Standards Law or enacting a separate law are possible solutions."
About 20 to 30 workers and activists were present in front of the CLA building yesterday. Migrant workers at the gathering would speak only on the condition of anonymity.
"They are afraid that speaking out in public might be grounds for being expelled from the country," said Shih Hsin University assistant professor Chen Hsin-hsing (陳信行), one of the participants at the protest.
A female foreign laborer who declined to be named said: "We are at the mercy of our employers until we are protected by the law."
Taiwan’s growing defense preparations might be sending a stronger signal to the US than to Beijing, highlighting the need for Taipei to tailor its deterrence efforts to different audiences, a US security academic said yesterday. Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro made the comment during a Taipei Security Dialogue panel examining lessons Taiwan could draw from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Mastro said she was impressed by Taiwan’s increased defense spending, emphasis on asymmetric capabilities and efforts to prepare society for conflict, but questioned whom those initiatives were influencing. She said when she asked
A total of 400 foreign “high- level” professionals have been naturalized as Republic of China (Taiwan) citizens over the past decade as the government has eased nationality rules to attract talent from a wider range of fields, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The 400th high-level professional, who works in the electronics industry, was approved for ROC citizenship on Aug. 26, the MOI said. The MOI quoted the newly naturalized citizen as saying that Taiwan is a leader in fields such as semiconductors, electronics manufacturing, artificial intelligence development and energy technology. He also said
China has warned that it could cancel a planned US-China leaders’ summit if Washington approves new arms sales to Taiwan, a Japanese media outlet quoted sources as saying yesterday. US President Donald Trump, “apparently eager to showcase some diplomatic achievements ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections, places great importance on holding the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Japan’s Kyodo News reported. “While preparing for Xi’s upcoming trip, China has restated its position that the Taiwan issue is a ‘red line’ in bilateral relations,” the report said. The report said that when Xi met with Trump in Beijing in May, Xi said
RARE PEEK: The footage released showed one of the bears staying in a cave for as long as 70 days, providing the first record of Formosan black bear’s overwintering The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released tracking records of released Formosan black bears for the first time, showing that they get much closer to human settlements than previously thought. The agency said it had captured two bears, Da Qu-ali (達古阿里) and Aziman (阿里曼), in indigenous villages in Hualien County and began to track them with a camera-mounted satellite collar after releasing them back into the wild. The results confirmed that the bears have moved from deep mountain areas into lowland hills closer to human communities, leading to an increase in human-bear conflicts, it said. The agency has introduced artificial intelligence-assisted early
RSS