The Ministry of Labor (MOL) on Tuesday said that a proposal to expand the use of migrant labor in large-scale construction projects requires additional evaluation.
The announcement came amid calls from migrant workers’ groups to focus instead on resolving wage disparities between local and foreign workers.
Citing labor shortages in the construction industry, the Ministry of the Interior submitted a proposal to the MOL earlier this month to allow the recruitment of additional migrant workers for residential and commercial building projects with lot sizes of at least 5,000m2 or total floor space of at least 20,000m2, and construction periods of more than one year.
However, Deputy Minister of the Interior Hua Ching-chun (花敬群) last week sparked debate by suggesting that the proposal would not only address labor shortages, but would also “slow the rise in construction costs and even affect housing prices.”
On Tuesday, as the MOL was scheduled to begin discussions on the proposal, a coalition of migrant workers’ associations rallied outside the ministry building calling for the proposal to be scrapped and for the government to instead address long-standing wage disparities between local and migrant workers.
Regardless of workers’ nationalities and the industry, migrant workers’ groups have opposed the recruitment of cheap labor, said Hsu Wei-tung (許惟棟) of the Migrants Empowerment Network in Taiwan.
In the 30 years since Taiwan opened its manufacturing and fishing industries to migrant workers, salaries have remained stagnant, Hsu said, adding that an industry’s reliance on cheap migrant labor is a sign that it is “more or less dead.”
Wu Jing-ru (吳靜如), a researcher at the Taiwan International Workers’ Association, cited MOL statistics showing that local workers’ salaries have stagnated and have occasionally fallen since the admission of new groups of migrant workers.
“This shows that the MOL’s long-term policy of using low wages to help boost capital has in fact been detrimental to the entire labor force,” Wu said.
Lennon Wong (汪英達), director of the service center and shelter for migrant workers run by the Serve the People Association in Taoyuan, said that using migrant workers to control housing prices is a “fantasy,” as labor costs are not the main factor for rising prices.
The proposal is beneficial only to employment brokers and small-scale contractors, he said, adding that the ministry should instead focus on the real issues facing migrant workers.
After two hours of discussion, an MOL advisory committee voted to request that the interior ministry conduct a thorough evaluation of the construction industry’s labor needs and assess the proposal from the perspective of the public interest.
Hsueh Chien-chung (薛鑑忠), a section chief at the MOL’s Workforce Development Agency who heads the committee, said that some advisers suggested carrying out the expansion on a trial basis, similar to an expansion in the number of migrant workers employed in the agriculture sector announced in February.
However, others questioned whether a similar expansion is necessary, citing statistics from August last year showing that the construction industry’s 2.62 percent job vacancy rate was lower than the 2.69 percent of the service industry’s, he said.
Hsueh acknowledged the position of labor groups, which have argued that the construction industry’s labor shortages are the result of low wages.
Aside from the current proposal, the government has twice this year lowered the requirements for hiring migrant workers on government-funded construction projects.
In March, it lowered the project value threshold from NT$10 billion (US$343.34 million) to NT$1 billion, and to NT$100 million in August.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,