Starting today, the Council of Labor Affairs will stop accepting applications from manufacturers that wish to hire foreign workers for “three shift” production.
Council Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) promised last month that the council would put the interests of domestic workers ahead of those of foreign workers and would slash 30,000 jobs held by foreign workers.
The council has approved a revision of the Reviewing Standards and Employment Qualifications for Foreigners Engaging in the Jobs Specified in Items 8 to 11, Paragraph 1 to Article 46 of the Employment Service Act (就業服務法). Starting today, the council will not accept applications — called the Permit to Recruit Foreign Person(s) — by businesses seeking to hire foreign workers for manufacturing work or late shifts.
“Currently, the unemployment rate is high, so domestic workers are more willing to take late shifts,” said Chen I-min (陳益民), director-general of the Bureau of Employment and Vocational Training. “The hiring of foreign labor is supplementary and shouldn’t cause domestic workers to lose their jobs.”
Chen said the revision would reduce foreign labor by 30,000 people this year, as the council had promised earlier.
The council said it would work with the Ministry of Economic Affairs on programs to hire foreign labor if the economy improves in the future. It also said the revision to the Act would be reviewed at the end of this year.
Taiwan International Workers Association consultant Lorna Kung (龔尤倩) criticized the policy as being a “mythical tale” that would not solve the unemployment problem.
“From the way the government has handled the situation, we can see how it treats foreign laborers. They are let in when the economy is doing well and sent out when the economy is bad,” she said.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics on Thursday released the unemployment numbers for the month of January, which was 5.31 percent, meaning some 578,000 people were out of work across the nation.
Saying she understood that high unemployment was putting pressure on government officials, Kung said the plan would not work because the problem was rooted in industry structure.
“Foreign labor is cheaper [than domestic labor]. Factories that are in [financial] trouble would close down rather than hire domestic workers,” she said. “So it’s impossible that when 30,000 foreign workers leave they will be replaced by 30,000 domestic workers.”
In related news, the bureau loosened restrictions for its on-the-job training program, which was launched in December.
To encourage companies to provide training for their employees instead of laying them off during the production slowdown, the Plan of Promoting Employment Skill in the Short-term subsidizes on-the-job training for both workers and companies.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai