Vietnam will become the fifth source of foreign labor imports since Taiwan first restricted its foreign labor sourcing to four countries in 1993, the Council of Labor Affairs (3狻e會) announced yesterday.
The cap on the total number of laborers will remain the same, but businesses will have more choice in terms of choosing their workers, according to the Council. For the last six years only workers from the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia have been able to get contracts.
"There is likely to be a substitution effect, with Vietnamese replacing laborers from Philippines and Thailand in the foreign labor market," Professor Cheng Chih-yu (|?妞? at Institute for Labor Research said.
Tony Huang (黃彥??), president of the Everest Investment Consulting Company (3偌-投資顧訑揉3--?膝q) -- which provides care centers with foreign laborers -- said he expects to substitute 60 percent of his current labor supply from Philippines with workers from Vietnam.
Currently, Thailand and Philippines are the major exporting countries, with the former accounting for 47 percent of Taiwan's imported labor, and the later accounting for 40 percent.
"Increasing the numbers of sources can also help avoid countries who export their workers to Taiwan exercising their power to in-terfere with Taiwan's sovereignty," Cheng said.
In terms of the management of Vietnamese workers, some re-searchers and human resources managers believes that there will be fewer cases of these workers fleeing their jobs.
"The major difference between Vietnam and the other source countries is that Vietnam is a communist regime, and therefore will exercise control over selecting, providing, and managing its laborers," Cheng said.
"For communist countries such as China and Vietnam, to export labors is a way to accumulate foreign exchange."
Tony Huang agrees. "Because the Vietnamese government promises to return the employers' guaranty fund if a worker escapes, I expect such problems would be less severe compared to the other four countries [that provide no such promises]," Huang said.
"The profit for a human re-sources company working with Vietnamese will be low, because the Vietnamese government has decreed that the first year is NT$42,000, including the service charge," Huang said.
Although this is the first time the Taiwan government has officially allowed businesses to directly hire their foreign workers, Huang said that businesses would still go through companies such as his.
"Local businesses requiring foreign laborers still have to go through human resources services, because this time the official contract (3珧囧捄1契約書) is between human resources companies and Vietnamese state-owned enterprises, which is different from the Philippines and Thailand," said Huang.
"Employment contracts for Philippine and Thai foreign laborers are signed between employers and employees."
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