Civil groups and scores of migrant fishermen rallied in front of the Ministry of Labor headquarters in Taipei yesterday, saying their employers have improperly docked money from their salaries and comparing their working conditions to slavery.
Protesters and migrant fishermen, mostly Filipinos, performed a skit and shouted slogans in different languages, demanding free accommodation and direct payment of salaries for migrant fishermen.
Taiwan International Workers’ Association researcher Wu Jing-ru (吳靜如) said many migrant fishermen have NT$5,000 deducted from their pay per month for onboard accommodation, as employers are allowed to provide lodging or other benefits worth up to NT$5,000 in lieu of the full minimum wage, according to the Labor Standards Act (勞基法).
Photo: CNA
The onboard lodging is not worth the money, but migrant workers — who usually earn the minimum wage — have to pay for it as well as brokerage fees, making their real wage much lower than the minimum, Wu said.
A Filipino fisherman using the name Joel said he could not sleep in the fishing boat he works on because the crew’s cabin is too hot and noisy due to its proximity to the engine, forcing him to sleep on a makeshift bed of cardboard on deck.
During a six-day layover due to a typhoon, he and another crew member were given only NT$500 for dining expenses, and they had to pick fruit on a nearby mountain to survive, Joel said.
Another fisherman, who gave his name as Joeril, said his captain limits water use and does not allow crew to do laundry onboard, while giving them only rice porridge for breakfast.
Wu said that human resource agencies often concoct various excuses to deduct migrant fishermen’s salaries, such as exacting brokerage fees, but listing the payment as “mortgage,” and forcing workers to sign a “mortgage contract” with the agencies’ subsidiaries registered in migrant workers’ countries of origin.
The ministry has been negligent by failing to conduct any inspections over such practices, Wu said, adding that it claims that the docking of pay — as it is a “mortgage” made between foreign workers and foreign-registered firms — is regulated by the labor exporting nation, instead of recognizing the practice as a breach of the act.
According to the ministry’s Foreign Workers Living and Caring Service Planning Book (外國人生活照顧服務計畫書), employers of migrant workers are required to provide accommodation that meets the workers’ needs, but the ministry has failed to ensure the implementation of the rule, Wu said.
Vietnamese Catholic priest Peter Nguyen Van Hung said that Vietnamese migrant fishermen faced a similar plight before they were blocked from working in Taiwan in 2004, with the situation remaining unchanged for years.
Ministry Senior Executive Officer Hou Song-yen (侯松延), who accepted the protesters’ petition, said it is legally permissible for employers to provide accommodation in lieu of payment, but added that the ministry would look into the protesters’ claims to determine whether there is any illegal activity going on.
The ministry is yet to conduct an inspection of the fishing industry due to its unique working patterns, Hou said, adding that it is the Fisheries Agency’s duty to inspect working conditions of fishing vessels operating outside Taiwan’s territorial waters.
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