Highly skilled blue-collar workers are being excluded from government attempts to attract foreign talent, lawmakers yesterday told a joint meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee, Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee, and Education and Culture Committee.
Draft amendments to the Act for the Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法修正草案) seek to ease requirements for foreign white-collar employees who want to work in Taiwan, but in-demand blue-collar workers face much more onerous rules, Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Ann Kao (高虹安) said.
“There are many migrant workers who come to Taiwan to work in our tech factories on the production lines under the Employment Service Act (就業服務法),” Kao said. “They are highly skilled workers, yet they are limited to 12 to 14 years here before they have to leave Taiwan.”
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
By limiting the employment period of foreign blue-collar workers, Taiwan risks becoming a “training center,” leaving those workers, who could have otherwise made Taiwan their home, with no choice but to move to another country, Kao said.
“With the rising importance of technology in US-Taiwan-China relations, this is a national security issue,” she said.
National Development Council Minister Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said he agreed that blue-collar talent drain is “of grave concern to Taiwanese industry.”
“It is not an issue that is addressed in the draft amendments,” Kung said. “However, we are in talks with Vice Premier Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) to deal with the problem separately.”
The talks are still in preliminary stages, he added.
Unlike blue-collar workers, “foreign special professionals” can stay in Taiwan indefinitely and have a pathway to permanent resident status, the council has said.
Foreign special professionals are described as employees who possess special expertise needed by Taiwan in science and technology, economics, education, culture, the arts, sports or other fields as determined by the authorities.
The draft includes extending short-term tax breaks offered to foreign special professionals to attract more talent, Kung said.
“We have a relatively high top marginal income tax of 40 percent versus 22 percent in Singapore and 17 percent in Hong Kong. I hope that by giving highly skilled foreign talent an extra incentive to try living in Taiwan, they will like [Taiwan] so much that they will stay,” he said.
The draft amendments seek to extend the tax break period from three to five years, the council has said.
If a foreign professional’s annual income reaches NT$3 million (US$107,852) during the five-year period, only half of the amount over that threshold would be included in gross income in the assessment of income tax liability, according to the draft amendments.
Simply cutting the tax is not being considered, because that would affect the government’s financial structure, Kung said.
However, he is upbeat that even a short-term benefit could result in foreign professionals choosing to make Taiwan their home, he said.
“People who try living in Taiwan end up loving it here,” Kung said. “We want to encourage more highly skilled professionals around the world to give Taiwan a chance.”
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
Germany is to establish its first-ever national pavilion at Semicon Taiwan, which starts tomorrow in Taipei, as the country looks to raise its profile and deepen semiconductor ties with Taiwan as global chip demand accelerates. Martin Mayer, a semiconductor investment expert at Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), Germany’s international economic promotion agency, said before leaving for Taiwan that the nation is a crucial partner in developing Germany’s semiconductor ecosystem. Germany’s debut at the international semiconductor exhibition in Taipei aims to “show presence” and signal its commitment to semiconductors, while building trust with Taiwanese companies, government and industry associations, he said. “The best outcome
RSS