It was 1999 when Allison Lee (李麗華), then 35 years old and working at the Taipei Department of Labor, first came into contact with migrant workers.
After a brief stint at the department, Lee discovered that bureaucracy was hindering her efforts to help them and decided that working for a civilian organization would be more practical.
Now 53, Lee continues to work to uphold the rights of migrant workers, despite having experienced verbal threats from ship owners and their intermediaries.
Photo: Chien Hui-ju, Taipei Times
“My only hope is that one day migrant workers will no longer be exploited,” she said.
When asked why she dedicated her life to helping migrant workers, Lee said it might have stemmed from her experiences working in a factory in then-Taoyuan County after she graduated from vocational high school.
At 27, she joined the Chingjen Labor Security and Sanitation Service Center of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a Catholic religious order, and spoke out against the illnesses that miners contract.
Lee eventually made a name for herself in the migrant worker community.
She was once contacted about a migrant worker who lost his arm while working on a boat registered to Nanfangao Fishing Port (南方澳漁港) in Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳). She later discovered, after poring over the Labor Union Act (工會法), that migrant workers were permitted to form unions.
Lee was instrumental in efforts to launch the Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union in 2013.
“At first it was difficult to rally the workers to my cause,” Lee said, adding that despite her reputation, many migrant workers at the docks were initially suspicious of her.
The intermediary agencies that dispatched workers for different jobs openly told the workers that she was lying, Lee said, adding that she was left with only one option: to prove her sincerity with action.
“I was not afraid for myself. I was only concerned that the workers would suffer more,” Lee said.
The agencies often came up with reasons to dock the workers’ pay. The migrants, who were earning between NT$10,000 and NT$20,000 per month, would have difficulty being self-sufficient when their pay was halved or worse, she said.
Lee poured her entire savings into the union and even sold her car.
“One time I wished to attend a rally in Taipei and found myself penniless, but I did not hesitate for even a second to spend the money in my husband’s account,” Lee said, adding that her husband only had NT$5,000 at the time.
Gradually the workers came to believe in the union as more boat owners were punished for assaulting migrant workers or docking their salaries, Lee said.
“I was moved to tears when those workers told me that their hearts and minds would never abandon the union,” she said.
If she did not try to do as much as she could, she would regret it in her old age, she said.
“It has always been my ultimate goal to be out of a job and see migrant workers stand up for themselves,” Lee said.
When the union first started, she had to translate or explain laws to the growing number of members, which reached 300 at its peak, but she is proud to say that she is almost no longer needed.
There was one case she regretted in September 2015, when an Indonesian man in his 40s, known only as Supriyanto, died from abuse by a fishing boat owner.
While visiting Supriyanto’s family in Indonesia, Lee said she was saddened when Supriyanto’s eldest son said he would never become a fisher out of fear he would be beaten to death like his father.
“Migrant workers come to Taiwan and work hard for our fishery businesses and we repay them with broken families,” Lee said.
Many of the migrant workers affectionately call her their “big sister,” and Lee said she was once asked by a migrant worker why she helped them so much.
“Do you help us out of compassion or are you simply a good person?” the worker asked, to which Lee said: “A little of both, I guess.”
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