Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: bangdoll/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 2.0
THE MINISTRY OF LABOR has released new guidelines on the rights of female migrant workers. Nevertheless, it is to be seen whether the guidelines rectify a longstanding problem in Taiwanese society.
One issue of note facing female migrant workers is that many have their work terminated after becoming pregnant. 6,000 female migrant workers become pregnant in Taiwan each year, but 78% of migrant workers who receive maternity benefits end their contracts and return to their home countries.
Female migrant workers are often dismissed by their employers when they learn that they are pregnant. This occurs despite that statistics suggest an increase in the number of female migrant workers who become pregnant, in that the number of female migrant workers that received maternity benefits increased from 1,848 to 5,687 from 2018 to 2023.
But in this same period, of these migrant workers, the number that ended their contacts increased sharply from 28.7% to 77.88%. Reports indicate that some migrant workers are forced by their employers into signing “voluntary” letters of resignation, which may be in Chinese, taking advantage of the fact that many migrant workers do not read Chinese.
As migrant workers not covered by the Labor Standards Act, such as domestic caregivers, are not eligible for maternity benefits, this suggests that the increase in the number of pregnant female migrant workers may be larger. It is not clear, then, as to what is the true number of female migrant workers ended their employment due to pregnancy–or may have potentially been forced to–except that this is likely to be larger than official count.
The new guidelines will be available in English, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Thai. They will also be distributed at women’s shelters, childcare centers, and distributed to migrant workers on LINE. The attempt, then, is to ensure that migrant workers know their rights.
The guidelines can be understood as an initiative of the Ministry of Labor under the tenure of former legislator Hung Sun-han. Before becoming a DPP legislator, Hung was a former Sunflower Movement activist, and a left-wing environmental activist close to organized labor. The Ministry of Labor has stressed that the input of migrant worker advocacy groups was sought in drafting the guidelines.
The Ministry of Labor. Photo credit: Solomon203/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
Still, part of the issue at hand fundamentally returns to the system of exploitation that migrant workers confront in Taiwan. No set of guidelines will change this. To this extent, guidelines from the Ministry of Labor may be limited in effect, seeing as other government stakeholders are also involved who may not be on the same page.
Taiwan’s current marriage laws have resulted in the separation of many migrant workers who are married but then divorce Taiwanese, resulting in migrant mothers who are desperate to stay in Taiwan. Likewise, while the Ministry of Labor has sought to stress that the guidelines apply to all migrant workers, even those who are undocumented, if the National Immigration Agency is not on the same page as the Ministry of Labor, migrant workers may still be cautious as to whether any rights they are claimed to have will genuinely be enforced. This, too, was the case when it came to COVID-19 policy for migrant workers during the pandemic, when police were not on the same page as the Ministry of Health and Welfare when it came to not conducting ID checks for migrant workers that sought treatment for COVID-19.
Moreover, cultural attitudes in Taiwan are discriminatory toward migrants. Many in Taiwan are not, in fact, aware of Taiwan’s lack of immigration policy for migrant workers, necessitating that blue-collar migrant workers cannot stay past twelve to fourteen years. Similarly, many Taiwanese are not aware that the children of migrant workers do not have any means to acquire Taiwanese citizenship, and yet may view them as a burden on society nonetheless–even if the precise reason that migrant workers are in Taiwan is that they take on the “dirty,” “dangerous,” and “demeaning” jobs that Taiwanese no longer want to.
This contributes to how migrant workers are often treated as not having basic human rights by their employers, in fields ranging from domestic caregiving–in which migrant workers are mad to work around the clock, without a clear division between work and off time–in factories, or on fishing vessels, in which it may be years at a time before migrant fishermen are able to return to shore. Unfortunately, it may not merely be guidelines, but fear of legal punishment that incentivizes such employers to improve the conditions facing migrant workers.