Labor law and migrants
The legislature has started reviewing the draft amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法). Led by the Migrants Empowerment Network in Taiwan, nearly 100 workers staged a protest in front of the Legislative Yuan to show their discontent with the draft.
According to a statement by the group, the blue-collar migrant workers at the bottom of Taiwan’s society will be the first to suffer when the draft is passed.
The network argues that the language barrier and insufficient information are making it impossible for migrant workers to hold equal negotiations with employers, although the government has said that it is relaxing conditions and that this will be controlled through talks between employers and employees.
The group also said that although the government is making a strong push for its New Southbound Policy, it has failed to provide migrant workers with translations of the draft amendments, completely ignoring their contributions to Taiwanese society, only considering employers’ interests and ignoring the current situation, which is turning Taiwan into an island of overwork.
Since the five-day workweek came into effect at the end of last year, companies’ labor costs have increased due to increased overtime pay, as well as two different ways of calculating overtime pay for overtime on working days and overtime on rest days.
Due to the high overtime pay, many factories are no longer willing to make employees work overtime.
Migrant workers, who mostly serve as production line operators, have come all the way to Taiwan just to earn money. As they are unable to earn overtime pay under the new policy, they have no choice but to take the risk of working illegally as part-timers in rural villages or in restaurants.
Many are caught by the police and their employers are fined.
I-Mei Foods Co general manager Kao Chih-ming (高志明) in June said that some workers and working single parents want to make extra money by working overtime, but that they are unable to do so due to legal restrictions.
The draft amendments are likely to address the issue of employers being unwilling to let employees work overtime.
Moreover, according to the Ministry of Labor’s second-quarter data on the number of labor unions, there are only 1,098 industrial and business labor unions in Taiwan.
Due to the shortage of local workers, migrant workers account for 40 percent of the total number of employees in the manufacturing and high-tech sectors.
That being so, migrant workers are in fact in a stronger position than local workers in those sectors when negotiating with employers for working conditions.
Huang Chen-lun
New Taipei City
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS