Migrant workers earned an average of NT$33,000 per month last year in the construction and industrial sectors, and NT$24,000 for domestic care work, the Ministry of Labor said in its annual migrant worker survey today.
The survey was conducted in July and August last year, receiving 8,554 responses — 4,538 from businesses and 4,016 from household employers.
The NT$33,000 monthly salary for those in industry or construction was an increase of NT$2,000 over the previous year, the ministry report said.
Photo: Lee Chin-hui, Taipei Times
Those who worked in the same position for a full year saw an average of NT$15,000 in additional bonuses, such as holiday pay and performance incentives, it said.
For construction and industrial laborers, the average number of days off in June was 11, an increase of 1.9 compared with the year before, it said.
Average monthly working hours stood at 179.1, a 13.3-hour decrease compared to 2023, of which 152.2 were regular hours and 26.9 were billed as overtime, it added.
Among employers, 39.7 percent reported issues, with the language barrier being the most common, followed by “communication issues” being the second-most common, the report said.
Other complaints such as “poor attitude and discipline” and “workers going missing” were reported by more than 10 percent of employers.
For domestic care workers, the average monthly salary of NT$24,000 was a NT$1,000 increase in both regular pay and overtime wages compared with 2023, although these results are in part due to June having an extra Sunday compared to the previous June, the ministry said.
Domestic care workers averaged 10.3 hours daily, with 57 percent having days off, while 36.4 percent had one day off per month and 13 percent had two to three days off, it said.
For households employing care workers, 89 percent reported alternative care plans for the caregiver’s days off, of whom 45 percent expressed interest in applying for subsidies for alternative care plans, it said.
The primary reason that caregivers did not have contracts renewed was “economic burden,” followed by scheduling conflicts, the report said.
Those who reported issues saw the language barrier as the most common problem, followed by “excessive phone use and chatting,” “communication issues” “and “poor attitude and discipline,” it added.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the