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Forum tackles unfair treatment at work

“They said they wouldn’t hire me because they don’t hire foreign spouses,” said Manee Rameekap, a Thai woman who married a Taiwanese man 13 years ago, tears running down her face.

Rameekap was seeking employment to supplement her family’s income after their child started kindergarten.

“I stopped by a small factory close to where I live and asked if they were hiring. As soon as the owner heard my accent, she asked if I was a foreign spouse,” Rameekap said. “I said ‘Yes’ and the owner told me right away: ‘We don’t hire foreign spouses.’”

Rameekap is far from the only foreigner to experience blatant job discrimination.

At a press conference organized by the Taiwan International Family Association (TIFA) to draw attention to the obstacles faced by foreigners on the job market, other speakers from Southeast Asian countries shared their experiences.

Speakers said discrimination could strike any foreigner in Taiwan, regardless of the level of their education and the kind of employment they seek.

“I have a friend who has a college degree from Vietnam and was a teacher in her country,” TIFA executive director Chang Yu-hua (張育華) told the press conference. “But when she looked for a job in Taiwan after marrying her Taiwanese husband, she was often turned down as soon as the employer heard that she was Vietnamese — without even glancing at her resume.”

“I don’t mind if a boss decides not to hire me because I am not qualified for the job, but don’t automatically turn us down just because we’re foreign spouses,” Rameekap said. “Please give us a chance.”

TIFA executive secretary Wang Shu-chuan (王淑娟) said that many businesses avoid hiring foreign spouses because they think it requires a lot of paperwork.

“Actually, immigrant spouses are different from immigrant workers. Since they’re married to Taiwanese, they have Alien Resident Certificates and are therefore entitled to work without added paperwork,” Wang said.

Wang also said, however, that many businesses were simply discriminating against foreigners and assumed that foreigners were lazy or unskilled, or stealing jobs from Taiwanese.

TIFA volunteer Yang King-de (楊金德) shared the discrimination experienced by his wife, Yi-chun (怡君), from Thailand.

Yi-chun got a job at a family-run factory and soon found that most of her Taiwanese colleagues were wary of her and rude.

“They thought I was there to steal their jobs so that I could wire money to Thailand,” she said.

Whenever the workload was light at the factory, the boss asked Yi-chuan to take unpaid leave, while the other employees were permitted to keep working.

Yi-chun also said she has received less pay than Taiwanese coworkers with the same duties at several jobs.

“While others were paid a full monthly salary with food and board costs covered, she was given NT$400 per day — and only for days she actually worked — and a monthly meal charge of NT$480 was deducted from her salary,” Yang said, visibly upset as he described the company’s treatment of his wife.

After conducting one-on-one interviews with 75 foreign spouses from Southeast Asian countries in Taipei and Kaohsiung, TIFA said it found that job discrimination went far beyond the issue of hiring policies and salaries. Foreign spouses were also often denied labor insurance and overtime pay and were required to work the most taxing shifts, while better hours were reserved for Taiwanese, TIFA said.

Wang urged any foreign spouses experiencing suspected discrimination at work to contact the group by phone at (02)2280-9500 or (07)767-5462.
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