Wed, Mar 15, 2006 page2

• Thai, Filipino workers end strike

  COMPROMISE While management agreed to shoulder the brokerage charges, workers still have to pay for their lodging, based on a new agreement

  • By Shelley Shan / STAFF REPORTER
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  More than 1,000 Thai workers at Formosa Plastics Group's (FPG) plant in Mailiao (麥寮), Yunlin County, decided yesterday to end a two-day strike that had partially halted the group's construction project.

  Labor and management reached an agreement after nearly eight hours of negotiations. While the workers will continue to pay NT$2,500 for accommodation out of their pockets, the NT$18,000 brokerage service fee will be shouldered by the employer if the worker maintains a perfect attendance record.

  Deputy director-general of the bureau of employment and vocational training, Lin San-quei (林三貴), one of the arbitrators for the dispute, said the negotiation process went smoothly.

  

  More than 1,000 Thai and Filipino workers at Formosa Plastics Group's plant in Mailiao, Yunlin County, stage a sit-in protest yesterday demanding exemptions from paying accommodation and brokerage fees.

  PHOTO: CHUANG YU-FENG, TAIPEI TIMES

  "The atmosphere [of the negotiation] was peaceful," said Lin, adding that minor disagreements among all the parties involved on several issues were inevitable.

  Lin said the local labor bureau in Yunlin will now be in charge of following up the case.

  With regards to the frequent foreign labor disputes at FPG, Lin said they pointed to a management problem but could be resolved through the negotiation mechanism.

  "Large-scale protests may just break out any time," Lin said. "Management has to know how to read the signs and be quick to identify these problems."

  The strike began on Monday with a relatively mild sit-in protest. Early yesterday, however, the protest turned violent as the 1,300 Thai workers were joined by Filipino workers at the plant.

  The protesters marched on an 8km, four-lane road outside the plant, waved iron bars in the air, pounded them on water jugs and blocked the entrance to FPG's administrative offices.

  Approximately 3,000 protesters participated in the second day of the strike yesterday.

  Representatives from CTCI Corp (中鼎工程), the contractor who hired the Thai workers, and the Thai Economic and Trade Office in Kaohsiung also arrived to negotiate with the workers.

  The workers presented several requests on Monday, including severance pay for workers who wish to terminate their employment contract early but have worked on the project for less than a year, medical coverage by the National Health Insurance and additional work opportunities. They also asked that they be freed from paying accommodation and brokerage charges.

  The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) issued a statement on Monday that management and labor had reached an agreement on the majority of the requests, but continued to differ on the issue of accommodation and brokerage charges.

  FPG entrusted CTCI and a Korean company with the task of recruiting foreign laborers to work on the project in its Mailiao plant.

  The Thai workers employed by CTCI were said to have signed and approved the content of the contracts before they arrived in Taiwan.

  However, after starting work in Taiwan and coming into contact with the workers hired by the Korean firm, they learned that the Korean company did not charge the workers for accommodation and brokerage services. This seemingly unfair treatment then triggered the protests.

  A CTCI spokesperson, who declined to be identified, said yesterday that everything the company did was legal, adding that the dissatisfaction expressed by the Thai workers was merely a problem of miscommunication.

  She said that the workers misinterpreted the difference between the contracts with CTCI and with the Korean firm. The pay given by the Korean company already factors in deductions for accommodation and brokerage charges, whereas CTCI, as stated in its contract, does not include these fees. When considered from this perspective, she said, the wages are actually the same.

  Although the dispute ended in harmony, labor rights advocates noted that these issues have continued to plague the Mailiao area for years.

  "Mailiao is the black hole of the law," said Wu Jing-ru (吳靜如), a rep-resentative of Taiwan International Workers' Association (TIWA), adding that the area had been inaccessible to outsiders since the first labor dispute broke out a decade ago, making it difficult to assess the real situation.

  "I don't think these workers will wage such a big protest simply because of money for meals," Wu said.

  According to estimates by the Yunlin police department, FPG has recruited 3,384 workers from Thailand and 1,729 from the Philippines as of last week.
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