Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: 李元顥/WikiCommons/CC BY 3.0
THE MINISTRY OF LABOR has rolled out new regulations for internships in the hospitality industry. The regulations are framed as strengthening the labor rights for students, as well as ensuring that internships do not become de facto forms of employment.
Namely, the regulations require that interns receive “subsidies” no less than the minimum wage, which is 29,500 NT monthly. Though board and lodging can be deducted from the subsidy, this is limited to 5,000 NT. Interns are not allowed to work more than eight hours a day and 40 hours a week, with interns required to provide written consent if they work between 10 PM and 6 AM.
Previously, what “subsidies” were received by interns, what their work hours were, and whether board and lodging were deducted from their subsidies were negotiated between schools and employers. Interns are also only allowed to work for half of their time in Taiwan, meaning that students of four-year programs can only work for two years.
These regulations point to the means by which internships in the hospitality industry have become a de facto way for the hospitality industry to employ migrant workers. The hospitality industry has long clamored for employment opportunities to be opened up to blue-collar migrant workers, mostly from Southeast Asia, but this was demurred on by the government. The government took the stance that this would be taking jobs away from Taiwanese.
This led to the emergence of internships as a means of getting around these restrictions. That being said, new changes to immigration law have opened up the hospitality industry to blue-collar migrant workers, in allowing migrant workers to take up cleaning roles, at the front desks of hotels, and in food services.
Yet more broadly, the use of internships as a means of hiring migrant workers points to how universities in Taiwan have increasingly become vehicles for skirting regulations about hiring migrants. Taiwan has repeatedly seen cases in past years in which students at universities are sent to work at factories.
In 2018, students at Kang Ning University in Tainan were found to have been sent to work in a slaughterhouse. Subsequently, in 2019, there were reports of Indonesian students at Hsing Wu University in New Taipei being sent to work in a lens factory and Filipino students at Yu Da University of Science and Technology in Miaoli sent to work in a tile factory.
This was followed by reports in 2020 of students from Eswatini at Mingdao University being sent to skin chickens in a refrigerated factory. In 2022, Ugandan students were reported at the Chung Chou University as also having been sent to work in factories, with Kao Yuan University also later accused of doing the same. Students who have been sent to work in factories include students from Southeast Asia, Africa, and other places.
This is partly a product of the commercialization of education in Taiwan. Taiwan saw an explosion in the number of colleges and universities from 28 in 1985 to 145 by 2005. In a time of a decreasing birth rate, there are increasingly few students to make up enrollment, forcing some schools to turn to mostly Southeast Asian students to bolster the falling student population, and needing tuition to survive. However, clearly, some schools have taken to acting as de facto migrant brokers in arranging for their employment in factories, with administrators receiving kickbacks in return for doing so. It is also the case that the schools have acted to facilitate students working in the hospitality industry.
The hospitality industry is the latest sector to take advantage of legal loopholes to hire migrant workers, in becoming dependent on a legal grey zone when it comes to such hiring policy for migrants. This can be observed in the use of migrant workers who have absconded from the job for jobs on farms, in construction work, and other positions, particularly in industries that require a high number of seasonal workers as the agriculture industry, which requires over 100,000 seasonal workers each other. The law is playing catch-up when it comes to existing hiring practices, in this sense, making the potential for labor abuses against migrant workers high.