A growing number of Taiwanese who are eligible for, or were working in, white-collar jobs are forsaking office life for jobs that are sometimes better paid, but have commonly been perceived to be the province of the working class, the BBC reported earlier this week.
The report focused on Sam Wei, a 28-year-old with a master’s degree in engineering, who quit his job at a high-tech firm to work in his father’s scooter repair shop.
Wei said that he had high hopes when he was fresh out of college, but found that his pay did not equate with the amount of work he was doing, adding that it was the impetus for him to return home and take over the scooter repair shop from his aging father.
The report also featured Nick Chen, a 50-year-old who had worked as the head of an IT department at the local county council and was unable to find a job after being laid off due to his age.
Now working as a laborer doing repairs to gas pipes, plumbing and electrical wiring, Chen said that he had at first been unable to come to terms with the radical change of career, adding that he had been ashamed to tell others that he, as a highly educated individual, was now reduced to fixing pipes, the report said.
Taipei City Vocational Development Institute director Kao Chun-yi (高俊儀) and online job bank yes123 also said that such a trend is developing.
Noting the increasing number of individuals attending the institute who had at least studied at college and even some with doctorates, Kao said that a high literacy level and the number of people who have been highly educated have perhaps cheapened the value of diplomas, adding that some are now of the mind that having a skill set is a better option.
An Internet poll by yes123 also revealed that more than 77 percent of white-collar workers are considering changing tack and taking on a blue-collar job, with the primary reason being that the wages paid to white-collar workers are too low and the threshold for better-paying jobs too high.
Electricians said that although such a trend is slowly starting to appear, some stereotypes are difficult to eliminate.
The common stereotype about electricians is that it is a working class job, for the uneducated, a company was quoted as saying, adding that it is still difficult to hire apprentices.
The Ministry of Education is making efforts to promote skill-set education and the Council of Labor Affairs has even revealed that an electrician’s average pay is actually higher than the average for a white-collar worker, the company said, adding that the majority of society still adheres to the concept that educated white-collar work is better than fixing pipes and electrical wiring.
The council conducted a survey in 2011 which revealed that the average wage for an electrician stood at about NT$37,800 — NT$11,800 more than the average NT$26,000 for a white-collar worker fresh out of college.
The company said that a shortage of manpower in the industry due to stereotyping meant companies now look to take on large jobs, such as renovations, and are reluctant to take on smaller, individual jobs such as a blocked pipe.
Wei said that his college friends had expressed shock and incredulity when they learned of his new occupation.
“Most people think this type of work is dirty and it is done by people who didn’t study, but I don’t think that’s true. It requires a lot of skill and I’m learning a lot,” Wei said.
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