Following a college graduate workplace internship project that lowered starting salaries for graduates, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government has launched a college research talent recruitment project, which lowers starting salaries for master’s and doctoral graduates by 20 percent. This would affect more than 3,000 graduates as the trend of “youth poverty” extends to the highly educated.
The second project is funded by the Ministry of Education to help colleges and universities recruit researchers holding master’s or doctoral degrees for one year, starting next month. According to the guidelines, schools will employ 670 researchers with doctoral degrees as postdoctoral researchers, paying a monthly salary of NT$44,000 (US$1,326) — much lower than the standard salary of NT$55,000 for postdoctoral researchers offered by the National Science Council (NSC). The schools will also employ 2,680 researchers with master’s degrees as full-time research assistants with a monthly salary of NT$28,000 — much lower than the NSC equivalent of NT$35,000. These declines mean that starting salaries for researchers have fallen by 20 percent.
Research assistants who are either college graduates or graduate students in master’s programs will be hired at a monthly salary of NT$22,000, much lower than the standard salary of NT$30,600 for NSC research assistants at this level.
In introducing the policy, the government claimed that “the salaries are reduced by 20 percent to maintain social fairness and justice.” To whom is this fair and what kind of justice is it?
If you type in the word “postdoctoral” at the Council of Labor Affairs’ eJob Web site, you will find more than 100 jobs for postdoctoral researchers with a monthly salary of NT$44,000, and for master’s graduates with a salary of NT$28,000 only. Both have dropped by 20 percent compared with previous entries.
Even those with a doctoral degree in bioscience, electrical engineering or medicine are facing the same problem. Take the prestigious National Taiwan University, for example. The school has the most resources and the biggest budget in Taiwan, and it has already applied for 117 cheap postdoctoral researchers and 250 cheap master’s graduates.
The latter of the government’s projects to cut unemployment will inevitably cut starting salaries for master’s and doctoral graduates, as well as depress overall wages in the labor market, not to mention squeezing out middle-aged and older workers.
The government should adjust the wage scales of its latest project to meet NSC standards, lest Taiwan’s educated youth be abandoned and choose to abandon the government in turn.
Lin Por-yee is an executive member of Youth Labor Union 95.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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