More than 100 Indonesian workers yesterday protested outside New Taipei City Hall, demanding that their contracts be extended and compensation be paid for agency fees and lost work time.
“These workers paid the equivalent of three years of agency fees, but will be sent back after working only one-and-a-half to two years,” said Chen Hsiu-lien (陳秀蓮), a Taiwan International Workers’ Association member who led the demonstration.
The workers in 2013 signed three-year contracts with Hwang Chang General Contractor, but received no salaries until more than a year-and-half later when they were hired for construction projects, such as an athletes’ village in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口) for this year’s Summer Universiade, she said, adding that agency fees for job placement came to more than NT$110,000 (US$3,461), about five months’ salary.
Photo: Lai Hsiao-tung, Taipei Times
The workers are faced with the possibility of paying agency fees for a second time because of the construction company’s unwillingness to directly rehire them, she said.
Amendments made last year to the Employment Service Act (就業服務法) allow foreign workers to renew their contracts or transfer to a new employer after working for three years without having to return to their home nation.
However, foreign workers have had difficulty using the right to change employers because of language barriers and a lack of government support, Chen said.
“The government Web site that publishes information about foreign workers seeking to switch employers is in Chinese, so they cannot verify if they have been put on the Web site by their employers,” she said.
“Even if their employer has completed the paperwork, they are in effect in the hands of agencies, because they do not have time to look for work, and they do not know where and how to find employers,” she added.
She called on the government to provide incentives to employers who hire or rehire foreign workers who are already in Taiwan.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods