More than four-fifths of employers of foreign caregivers say they would be willing to offer their employees the minimum wage, a survey by the Council of Labor Affairs showed yesterday.
In July last year, the council polled more than 10,000 employers of foreign workers, 5,000 of whom employ foreign caregivers, to ask them about their attitude toward hiring foreign workers and the compensation and benefits given to their workers.
The survey showed that as many as 85 percent of employers were willing to pay foreign caregivers, who are currently exempt from the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), the minimum wage.
The current minimum wage is NT$17,880 a month.
GIVING A BREAK
The survey also showed 64 percent of employers believed that giving foreign caregivers a set amount of break time in a day was acceptable.
However, only 27 percent said they would be willing to give priority to Taiwanese over foreign workers when seekuing to hire at-home caregivers, which showed that most employers of caregivers still preferred foreign labor because of their relatively lower wages.
Officials said the survey showed that if the council proposed including foreign caregivers in the act and therefore having their salaries adjusted in accordance with the minimum wage, it would be widely accepted by most employers of foreign caregivers.
DAY OFFS
The absence of days off has long been on the list of complaints by foreign worker associations and labor groups.
Groups such as the Taiwan International Workers Association have said that failing to make it mandatory for employers to provide for caregivers to take certain days off amounted to legalizing the current practice of refusing to give foreign at-home workers days off.
The groups say foreign workers are at a disadvantage because they do not have any negotiating power and are not able to freely change employers.
Labor groups have also questioned why the nation’s labor standards do not apply to foreign workers, who they say are not treated like human beings with equal rights as domestic workers.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS