I’ve been working for a Taiwanese company for 3 months now, and things aren’t great.
It is one of those companies that has all sorts of tricks to reclaim a significant part of your salary every month; and of course inform you about those “policies” after the payday. :fume:
Browsing through the Labor Stadards Act website, I realised a large numbers of the things they do and ask for are illegal, but there are a few precise points on which I’d like to get advices from those who have more experience on how things go down in TW.
I’ll list my questions one by one so that’s clearer.
1. Every day, we have to punch in and punch out. If you fail to punch out, they ask you to pay a fine and use CCTV to check when you got out. If you don’t pay for CCTV, they deduct the entire day from your salary as they consider you were absent that day (and that you didn’t work at all, even though you punched in).
This rule is not written anywhere, nor in the work rules I had to sign. My understanding is that according to Article 70 of the Labor Std Act, it should be clearly stated.
This month, they deducted me 7 days, which I discovered when reading my payslip.
They also say that “it’s too late” to ask for CCTV has I’ve been paid already (I should say “finally”, since they pay with a 20 days delay).
Is there any way I can reclaim my money back?
Now most importantly, AFTER I signed my contract - getting me the work permit - they came up with that:
2. They asked me to sign an “agreement” stating my base salary would be 40k + 10k of various stuff (confidentiality agreements + overtime).
Is this legal given that a foreigner’s salary should be 48k at least? Does it put me at fault in regards to the law and do I risk anything if I sign that (I kept refusing so far)? The contract given to the government and used to issue my work permit says my salary is 50k.
My payslip shows that whether I signed or not, they pay me according to that “agreement” (40k base salary + overtime).
3. They also require I sign an agreement giving them the right to decrease my salary by 20% if my workload gets low. Same questions: does it put me at fault in regards to the law? And what can I do if they enforce it anyway (despite I didn’t sign)?
4. Is it legal to pay employees 20 days late (seems a sort of deposit to me…)?
5. How about deducting 2h of pay if you’re late by 1 minute or more?
The company has an endless list of terrible reviews on internet (I should have checked that before…) and I intend to hit the slide soon since things aren’t great. So I’m not too scared to confront them if needed.
Any advice would be much appreciated