Civil society groups held a press conference in front of the Taipei Fish Market late last month to call for wi-fi access for migrant fishermen. Participant groups included the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Stella Maris Kaohsiung, Global Labor Justice - International Labor Rights Forum, the Humanity Research Consultancy, and Fospi Donggang Pingtung. Legislator Chiu Hsien-chih of the NPP was also present and DPP legislator Hung Sun-han was scheduled to attend but was later unable to make it. According to these groups, this press conference was more than half a year in planning...
Taiwanese seafood was again included in the US’ "List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor", released in late September. The results of the report, then, continue Taiwanese seafood being placed on the list for the first time in 2020, which is an annual report released by the US Department of Labor...
The Fisheries Agency has announced that it intends to recruit 79 inspectors, as part of an initiative to increase the number of inspections carried out of migrant fishing vessels conducting deep sea fishing. This takes place, then, as part of an attempt to improve the labor conditions for migrant fishermen. The labor inspectors will primarily work in Pingtung, Kaohsiung, and Yilan...
Anger from fishermen has broken out after plans by German energy company EnerVest to develop wind farms near the islets of Huaping, Mianhua, and Pengjia. Controversy regarding the issue follows a familiar dynamic in Taiwan...
Efforts by the European Union, specifically under its illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing regulations in 2015, have brought a sharp focus on the employment conditions on Taiwanese fishing vessels and the climate of illegality that enables unsustainable fishing and labor abuses. This has shone a harsh light on the labor exploitation of migrants working on fishing vessels with a connection to Taiwan...
It should have proven of little surprise when Taiwan found itself on the US Department of Labor’s list of goods believed to be produced by forced labor for the first time late last month...
There has been increased focus on the issue of migrant fishermen abuses in Taiwan in the past month as a result of a Control Yuan probe into a 2019 report by Greenpeace ...
The International Center for Cultural Studies at National Chiao Tung University recently held a conference on “Dialogue between Law and Society – A Seminar on Migrant Workers’ Labor Rights and Government Policies”...
The latest round of protests against the exploitative migrant labor brokerage system saw hundreds of people demonstrating outside the Indonesian, Filipino, and Vietnamese representative offices in Taipei in early November. Yet the Taiwanese Ministry of Labor responded to the protests by washing its hands of any responsibility for upholding this predatory system of labor brokerage. The Ministry of Labor's deference to the free market is consistent with the government’s goal of treating Southeast Asian migrant workers employed through the guest worker program as cheap and disciplined labor power...