I signed a contract with a school about three weeks ago and they have my paperwork and are initiating the ARC process. Now that I have signed, all of the details of the job have changed and now I am required to do A LOT more then I agreed to. Without going through the details, I am trying to think of any way out of this terrible situation. If I haven’t gone to the foreign affairs office or the police for my work visa, is my regular 60 day multiple entry visa still valid? Will their be any legal ramifications if I decide to quit this week? Any advice would help, thanks…
Sorry I can’t help with the details, but don’t take the law here or contracts too seriously - I reckon you’ll be fine. Someone will know. You could ask at the Foreign Affairs Police - most of them are actually quite helpful. Also, you could anonymously ask at the other relevant departments. The police don’t have anything to do with the Work Permit as far as I know, so don’t worry about that - there’s very little organization or communication between departments here, anyway. Perhaps you could strike up a conversation at work and find out casually who they applied for theWork Permit through (Taipei City Government or Bureau or some such) and then anonymously ring them and ask about your query giving some excuse or some story. Help, Hartzell!
Your school has applied for a work permit, but you don’t have a residence permit that depends on it yet? Nothing to stop you applying for another work permit elsewhere.
Until you actually apply for residency then you’re still on your 60-day visa. You still have physical possession of your passport?
In your situation I would simply inform your boss that you will only work under the conditions that you were hired under. If that stuff is not explicitly stated in your contract then ask them to sign an appendix which can be added to it.
Only work as agreed, and they’ll probably try to bully you. The chances are they’ll fire you and refuse to pay you. Then you have to fight to get paid for any work that you have done. They’ll argue that is was illegal, so point out that they’ll get fined if you have to go to the authorities. It’ll be tough, but better to get out now than have them holding your nuts for a whole year.
You may have to write off any money owed, although it is worth fighting for it.
Or maybe they’ll realise that they can’t bully you and will just let you work according to the terms originally agreed. 
I assume you know that the job market is reported to be a bit tight now, and that you may end up having to do a visa run if you don’t get a job very very quickly. But there are decent jobs out there and it’s important to find a place where you’ll be happy for a year.
You could always put up with it until you find a second job, and get a second work permit before quitting this one. But I would not recommend doing this. Nothing ever changes if you don’t stand up for yourself from the beginning, and it’s not always easy to find another job if the first one is taking a lot of your time.
Hope it works out for you.
Thanks for the advice. I do still hold my physical passport and I am going to try to talk with my boss on Monday, payday. I figure I will get my money and lay out my case the best I can. I don’t think there is anything they could do to reassure me that things would be different in the future. I think I have to walk away and find something else ASAP. Thanks again for the information.
Although your questions have largely already been answered, I will reiterate some of the comments for what it’s worth.
Yes. As you seem to realize, the work permit has no effect upon your visa. Your visa would only change after you had handed your passport and work permit to the BOCA.
Provided that your work permit hasn’t been approved, I very much doubt it.
Generally speaking you would need to be a legal employee (hold an ARC) with a company before they could give you any legal or official grief.
That said, your employer may attempt to make it difficult for you to secure another position at a nearby school. In Taipei there would be little that they could do in this regard, but in a small town this may be a problem.
Finally, you should check on the progress of your work permit application. If the school hasn’t sent it in yet then I would probably ask them not to and that way you will totally be off the record. If it goes through and you are issued a work permit then there may be some complications, although now that you can legally have more than one employer, these complications are unlikely to be too severe.