A discrepancy in the stipulations concerning board and lodgings in a contract provided to migrant workers by the Philippine government, and in a legal document issued by the Ministry of Labor might lead to legal disputes, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) said yesterday.
The “Employment Contract for Factory Workers/Construction Workers” provided by the Labor Center of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office, which is signed by migrant workers before they come to Taiwan, states that free board and lodging are to be provided by employers, Chen said.
However, the Ministry of Labor’s “Foreign Worker’s Affidavit for Wage/Salary and Expenses Incurred before Entering the Republic of China for Employment,” which is also signed by the workers before they come to Taiwan and verified by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, states that employers would charge employees a monthly fee for board and lodging, Chen said.
A factory in Taoyuan has told him that some of its Philippine workers are planning to claim back the fees that have paid for board and lodging, which they said should have been free according to the terms of their contracts, Chen said.
“In the affidavit, it is agreed that there is a monthly fee for board and lodging,” he said.
Assuming that a NT$2,500 (US$81.57) monthly fee was paid by each worker, if the 130,000 Philippine migrant workers in Taiwan are assumed to have worked an average of three years, the amount at stake would be more than NT$10 billion, Chen said, urging the ministry to come up with a solution.
Similar disputes have arisen since 2008, “but at the beginning it involved migrant workers regardless of their nationality,” ministry official Su Yu-kuo (蘇裕國) said. “Since then we have reached agreements and ironed out inconsistencies with all the governments involved except Manila, which in 2013 changed its contract [to demand free board and lodging] and has since been insistent on retaining the clause despite our requests,” he said.
In 2008 and 2013 the ministry declared that employers could make consensual agreements with workers to change their contracts to eliminate the discrepancy and bring them into line with the affadavit — under the condition that the workers’ basic rights are protected, Su said, adding that employers that have done so will have the upper hand in any lawsuits filed on the matter.
“We will continue our efforts to communicate with the Philippine government at the meeting scheduled for August between the two countries’ ministers of labor,” Su said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,