A report by Greenpeace released last week suggests that human rights abuses in Taiwan’s fishing industry continue to take place, with little change having occurred in spite of criticisms in past years from Greenpeace and other environmental and labor NGOs. Taiwan has over 20,000 migrant workers that work on deepwater fishing vessels and one-third of tuna catches in the world come from Taiwanese vessels...
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...
Attacks against the Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union have intensified in the wake of the astonishing collapse of the Nanfang’ao Bridge earlier this month...
The ripple effects from the collapse of the Nanfang’ao Bridge are slowly but surely merging with political currents in Taiwan, redirecting their force, and fashioning social relations anew...
A Facebook group “Nanfangao, a small village but full of love,” emerged in the days after the collapse of the Nanfang'ao cross-harbor bridge in early October...
A working group formed under the auspices of the Fisheries Agency has been meeting to discuss the labor rights of migrant workers employed aboard Taiwan’s distant water fleet...
On September 20th, the training ship Yu Shiun No. 2 departed Ch’ien-chen Harbor in Kaohsiung, carrying an eclectic crew of passengers, including officials with the Fisheries Agency, employees of the Overseas Fisheries Development Council of the Republic of China, and members of the Serve the People Association, the Environmental Justice Foundation, and the Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union ...
Accusations that Taiwanese fishing vessels violate international laws are back in the news after a report by the UK-based Environmental Justice Foundation that Taiwanese fishing vessels have been killing dolphins as bait to lure in sharks to capture them for their fins...
