In 2009, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) made a welcome move to offer in-house contracts to all outsourced employees. It was a step forward for labor relations and the enterprise facing long-standing issues around outsourcing.
TSMC founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) once said: “Anything that goes against basic values and principles must be reformed regardless of the cost — on this, there can be no compromise.”
The quote is a testament to a core belief of the company’s culture: Injustices must be faced head-on and set right. If TSMC can be clear on its convictions, then should the Ministry of Education also not be able to take a determined and principled stance on the long-overlooked institutional challenges that local language teachers face?
Every day across Taiwan, local language teachers are traveling between schools to classes, promoting culture and mother tongue development. However, most of them are only formally employed in the capacity of substitute teachers or as teaching support. They prepare classes, teach and participate in administrative affairs just as full-time, single-school teachers do, but huge gaps persist in terms of pay, benefits and training opportunities. To borrow the business vernacular, they are the outsourced employees of the education system. Educational spaces and professionals who have chosen to support local language policy development have long been marginalized by the system — an injustice that is surely deserving of being set right.
Article 10 of the Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法) stipulates that “the central supervisory agency for education shall train instructors in national languages, and assist the supervisory agencies of special municipalities, counties, and cities in the hiring, in principle, of dedicated instructors” — where the term “dedicated” refers to in-house and often full-time employees. Clearly, it is the government’s responsibility to establish a system through which local language teachers can be offered formal employment and stability through which they can continue to teach and develop professionally.
Despite this, the system for teaching support staff operates through year-by-year appointments and pays by the hour. These teachers lack benefits that increase with seniority such as bonuses and annual leave, as well as job security and opportunities for upward mobility. Their working conditions go against the spirit of the act. If these teachers continue to be taken for granted, there can be no stable foundation from which local language education could flourish.
It has been six years since the act was promulgated. The government has repeatedly made noises about wanting to “protect language rights” and “cultivate language talent,” but local language teachers continue to be left out in the cold. The gradual normalization of using the teaching support framework for local language teachers, initially intended as a transitional structure, has undermined their professional dignity and trapped the system in a vicious cycle of underappreciation and insecurity.
These language teachers are not calling for an immediate transition to full-time positions, but simply the ability to do their work in clearly defined roles within a reasonable framework. The ministry could, in line with the act, establish such a system with standardized qualification requirements, training and hiring processes. It would give local and native language education in Taiwan a stable foundation, and give teachers the deserved level of respect.
Offering education in students’ native languages is more than a language policy — it is a manifestation of cultural respect. For children to be able to naturally converse in Hakka, Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) or indigenous languages in class, what they are practicing is not just a language, but identification with their land and culture. The driving force of this practice is, of course, those educators who quietly travel from school to school as local language teachers.
If TSMC has the resolve to address its own institutional failures, so too can the ministry. Reforms must begin with respect for local language teachers, just as linguistic equality begins with addressing systemic injustices.
Huang Li-fen is a support teacher of the Hakka language.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
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