Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Zairon/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
MIGRANT WORKER GROUPS demonstrated ahead of International Domestic Workers’ Day earlier this month to call for the inclusion of migrant workers in the labor insurance system.
In particular, the demonstration focused on the rights of domestic migrant workers to labor insurance. Domestic migrant workers, along with other categories of migrant workers, are currently not included in the Labor Standards Act. The Labor Insurance Act, too, would likely need to be amended if migrant workers are to be included in its provisions.
To this extent, current legal provisions make it optional for employers to provide labor insurance to workers if they have fewer than five employees. As such, this results in a situation in which domestic migrant workers do not have labor insurance.
Labor insurance covers migrant workers in the event of occupational injury, disability, childbirth, and death. However, the current lack of labor insurance results in a situation in which domestic migrant workers may be sick or injured, but face situations where they continue to have to work.
Domestic migrant workers mostly take care of elderly individuals in Taiwanese families. At a time when Taiwan has become a “Super-Aged” society, with more than 20% of the population above 65, this means that it has become increasingly common for Taiwanese families to hire migrant workers to take care of elderly family members.
Even so, this is a job that is not covered by the Labor Standards Act. Domestic migrant workers, then, work long hours for low pay in taking care of such elderly individuals. This proves a job in which there are no designated working hours, in which such workers are expected to take care of elderly individuals around the clock. Such domestic workers rarely have days off, if at all, perhaps only having Sunday off–and it is known that some Taiwanese families refuse to grant migrant workers days off at all.
More broadly, migrant workers in Taiwan face steep fees imposed on them at all levels of employment. Brokers charge them exorbitant fees to arrange their transportation to Taiwan and employment. Oftentimes, migrant workers are unable to pay these fees, and have to take out loans in order to afford broker fees, sometimes from loan agencies that may be owned by brokers themselves. It has been a longstanding demand of migrant worker groups to phase out the broker system, which calls to instead institute a system of government-to-government hiring.
The Ministry of Labor has demurred on the matter, stating that it would need to take into account the viewpoints of employers and employees. This is similar to how labor officials in Taiwan have also demurred on the issue of the broker system, claiming that there is a market need for the broker system, and refusing to comply with longstanding demands to get rid of it.
Yet this touches upon problems more broadly faced by migrant workers. For example, labor insurance also covers cases of pregnancy. It has often been the case in Taiwan that migrant workers who become pregnant are fired, in spite of the fact that this should be illegal. This often takes place through migrant workers being coerced into signing documents of voluntary dismissal if they become pregnant, often taking advantage of that migrant workers may not understand Chinese, may not know what rights they have under the law, or otherwise coercing them into signing agreements that they would not agree to.
Though pregnant migrant workers are granted 180 days to find a new job, and this is one of the rare cases in which transferring employers for migrant workers is allowed, these regulations sometimes lead to migrant workers having to once again go through the broker system and incur more fees. In 2022, the Control Yuan found that 66.1% of pregnant migrant workers the year prior terminated their contracts, while 8,010 of 13,521 migrant workers who returned to their home countries after giving birth did so after terminating their contracts.
Indeed, it is also the case that fear of deportation often leads undocumented migrant workers to avoid seeing doctors. This is an issue that affects 92,000 undocumented migrant workers, as well as the at least 850 children of undocumented migrant workers in Taiwan–even in the case of life-threatening illness.
It is to be seen if any action is taken by the Ministry of Labor on the matter. It is improbable that elected officials will be motivated to take action without pressure from the public that may influence votes. Short of international condemnation of Taiwan’s migrant labor practices in a way that affects Taiwan’s global image, it has proven hard to push the government to take action.