The government plans to introduce what it calls "tech industry alternative service" whereby men conscripted into the armed forces will be transferred to private companies to assist the high-tech industry. The policy aims to recruit high-quality professionals at a low cost, as well as to downsize the military and reduce the government's financial liabilities.
The policy will be a boon to industry but a slap in the face for labor, as its purpose is clearly to help employers save money. Given the average salary of "alternative servicemen," it will create employees who are two-thirds cheaper than foreign workers.
The policy will give companies the legal duty to exploit these servicemen. Meanwhile, this will lead to a "crowding-out effect" on other workers and will further worsen the unemployment rate -- just like "heaping frost on top of snow" (雪上加霜), as the old Chinese saying goes.
The policy departs from the whole purpose of military service, which is effectively to requisition members of the labor force -- through compulsory conscription -- to serve society, especially to perform duties that most people are unwilling to do due to considerations of personal interest.
One of the government's reasons for advocating the policy is to prevent the military from disrupting the cultivation of high-tech talent. This, however, flies in the face of the Council of Labor Affairs' efforts to promote on-the-job training. On the one hand, the industry would rather abandon its own workers while seeking new faces from local campuses. On the other hand, military service has been viewed as a most egregious interruption of the talent- cultivation process. This also suggests that the goal of Taiwan's higher education sector is to cultivate profit-makers for industry, not to cultivate academic talent for society as a whole.
If the military has to downsize, I believe that the existing "social alternative service" offers the best means for it to do so. Is all the reconstruction work necessitated by the 921 earthquake finished? Are there enough workers to complete the existing infrastructure projects ? Are there enough teachers and social workers in every corner of the nation?
The resources of our society are distributed according to considerations of private profit. Each individual has followed the selfish criteria of "more money, less work, close to home" when looking for work. Compulsory military service may now provide the only time in which we serve society, rather than private capital or just ourselves.
Chen Kuo-liang is chairman of the Hsinchu Confederation of Trade Unions.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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