Migrant workers should be allowed to change employers, a coalition of migrant rights groups and migrant worker organizations said yesterday as they rallied outside the Ministry of Labor in Taipei, urging the public to join them in a march next month.
Migrant workers can only start a new job if they are not at fault for losing their previous one, such as when their factory closes down, fishing boat sinks, or when their employer dies or loses the right to employ them after contravening the law, said Ella Weng (翁倩文), a representative of the Migrants Empowerment Network in Taiwan, a coalition of seven migrant rights groups that co-organizes the labor rights march on Jan. 16.
Outside of those reasons, a migrant worker can only change jobs if their employer agrees, Weng added.
Photo: CNA
“As Taiwanese, we all know what freedom is, but if migrant workers need their employers to agree to them changing jobs, is that really freedom?” Weng said. “If Taiwanese needed the signature of their employers to resign from their jobs, could you accept that?”
Weng asked Taiwanese to put themselves in the shoes of migrant workers and understand the struggles they are facing.
At the rally, a 36-year-old Indonesian caretaker who gave her name as Ani said that she last month left her job at a long-term care facility after her employer refused to pay her for overtime work.
She had no access to the records of her hours, she said, adding that she now lives in a shelter for stranded migrant workers.
Her employer made her work excessive hours and refused to agree to her request to change jobs, Ani said, adding that her employer told her it was illegal for her to reach out for help.
“I really want to ask everyone, do Taiwanese also need to have their employer’s permission to change jobs?” Ani said.
A 41-year-old care worker from the Philippines who gave her name as Janice said she is also staying at a shelter because her employer had mistreated her.
“They treated me like an animal, not like a human. I suffered a lot,” Janice said.
Her employer forced her to wear a mask at all times, except for when she was sleeping or taking a shower, Janice said.
She left her employer in New Taipei City about three months ago and has not had any income since then, Janice said, adding that she has three children to support in the Philippines.
Fajar, who is president of Indonesian workers solidarity group Ganas Community, said that Taiwan’s laws should conform to international standards and not fall behind the times.
“We invite everyone who cares about the rights of migrant workers to join us on our march on January 16, in hopes that Taiwanese society will understand and that the government will abolish the law restricting the freedom to transfer jobs, which is the root of [our] oppression,” Fajar said.
Participants in the Jan. 16 event are to gather at Taipei Railway Station’s west entrance at noon before marching to the headquarters of the governing Democratic Progressive Party at 1pm and afterwards to the labor ministry, the network said in a statement.
Ministry data showed that there were 675,672 migrant workers in Taiwan at the end of last month.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater