My cram school made me sign a contract saying that I am a commissioned contractor or something and so they are not liable for any labor insurance, health insurance, paid leave, retirement benefits ect… Is this legal? I have to go to their location to work.
Do you have a spousal ARC? Do you have an educational company?
or open work permit with APRC/TARC, or student work permit, or working holiday visa?
It’s not legal. This is just them pretending to be smart and trying to get away with bullshitting you and themselves. If they get caught, they’ll get fined big time. I’d suggest finding a different school. There are plenty of other places these days.
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You could go to NIA or MOL with the contract and ask them if it is legal, and what you should do if it is illegal.
Best to check with your Special Municipality’s or County’s Labour Affairs Department. They are the ones who deal with that. I know from experience.
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or hukou?
If you read Chinese
如果公司要求與受僱勞工片面簽定承攬契約或委任契約，則由於服勞務的特性，實質上是屬於雇傭的性質，雖形式上名為「委任」或「承攬」契約，亦不失為雇傭的特性，則因與事實不符，雙方還是僱傭關係。
二方無論簽具何種契約，並非單純以契約名稱論斷，尚需實質認定。
而勞工局已經就二者實質關係行政認定資方與業務員間具有僱傭關係，勞保局當依據勞保條例規定，按自僱用之日起，處以資方二倍罰鍰。
This always triggers me.
Really? They made you? What, did they have a gun to your head? They holding your family hostage?
It is simple, don’t sign anything you are not comfortable signing. Jobs are a dime a dozen out there. Their loss, not yours.
Not sure why @SuiGeneris is so “triggered” by OP’s choice of words. A lot of people say someone “made” them do something when they feel undue pressure, not necessarily under threat of being murdered.
Chill.
But everyone else is right, OP. This sounds like a shithouse buxiban and you should laugh in their faces and keep looking. Even if you signed that contract it’s probably invalid due to all the illegal stipulations and conditions.
He could have said ‘they had me sign …’
You know why it gets me triggered? Because people don’t take responsibility for their own actions. They are so quick to blame everyone and everything around them for their own circumstances which 99.9% of the time are a direct result of choices they made with their own free agency.
To say someone “made” you do something, means you had no other choice whatsoever. You were forced, coerced and had no free agency.
Truth is, you walk in, apply for a job, read the contract and either you accept it by signing it or walk out. If you later “realize” you signed for something you did not understand or did not read and then say “I was forced”…that is an extreme stretch of reality simply not true.
If the business tells you that changes are being made to a contract, you have every right and the free agency to walk away, sue, negotiate, etc.
If your financial circumstances are such that you can’t walk away and see it as the only option to meet your needs, then that is a choice as well. You are still not being “forced” to do anything. You simply have no other available options at that moment.
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I wrote the topic in a hurry. I think everyone understood what I meant by ‘made’. Their condition for continuing to work there was this contract.
I am a dual Taiwanese/ American citizen.
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so, you have a hukou/Taiwanese citizenship, and no need of work permit, right?
Exactly. This needs to be answered first.
If you require a work-permit, then this company can’t legally do this.
If you don’t require a work-permit, then this company will try this, but it’s not exactly legal either.
But, a huge no-no if they have sponsored your work-permit and you are working for them.
You aren’t working illegally, are you?
I don’t need a work permit.
I am not working illegally.
Yes go. Just turn them in. This will never change unless you do something.
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The short answer is no.
The medium answer is no, but it’s not criminal either (at least probably not in a way you can prove).
The long answer is complicated. The administrative authorities (local labor department, BLI, any other department/agency taking an interest, and the administrative courts if it gets to that) will most likely agree, assuming there’s nothing unusual about this job aside from the contract, that you are both an employee and a worker (technically not the same thing), but they don’t have jurisdiction over every aspect of your relationship with your employer, so in some situations your employer could stiff you and leave you with no recourse but to file a civil suit, and the civil courts don’t always agree with the administrative courts, so they might decide you’re only a mandatary (or what would be called an independent contractor in a common law country).
A prominent example in recent years is Nanshan Insurance. The Supreme Court and Supreme Administrative Court disagreed about whether Nanshan’s brokers were workers (leaving aside the question of whether they were employees), and the case (actually several cases involving thousands of brokers) was appealed to the Council of Grand Justices (aka the “constitutional court”), which waxed poetic about the nature of private law and concluded with, basically, due to a technicality we actually have no obligation to resolve this disagreement between the courts. Have a nice day! So the brokers simultaneously are and are not workers.
Tl/dr: just find another job. 
(If you’ve been working there for a while, it may be worthwhile to do an Art. 14 termination and demand severance pay, with a little help from the labor department. We have had several threads about that.)
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Sorry Sui, it’s just not that simple.
The average worker is under pressure and doesn’t know his/her rights. It’s called inequality of bargaining power, and it’s a thing.
In Taiwan, when they amended the Civil Code to include this article, it wasn’t really an innovation but a codification of relevant jurisprudence.
What we have here is @cryptocoin going to work one day and being told, sign this or lose your job. (We know he already had the job because he said the contract was for him to continue working there.) The contract is designed to release Party A from its obligations under the Labor Standards Act etc., simultaneously depriving Party B of the corresponding rights. Presumably there’s no benefit in this for Party B, except some vague notion of “flexibility”.
We don’t know all the facts of the case, but prima facie it looks like the employer is shirking its obligations and trying to cover it up with a BS contract. That’s what some people call fraud.
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in general, well educated workers with university degree coming from abroad must know their rights and obligations in Taiwan, imo.
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My wife’s cousin is in the same boat as you. Her well-known English school K****, has exactly the same thing going on. I will ask her the exact particulars and perhaps I will even post her contract for everyone to see after sanitizing the personal information from it.
If I recall correctly, K****, refers to her as a cooperating contractor and not an employee, so they can avoid labor insurance, health insurance, retirement, etc. They’ve been doing this for the past 15 years. She told me that she could get all the benefits, but then she would have to sign a “full-time” contract with them and agree to work a certain number of hours per month in order to maintain the benefits. Also, she would have to accept any class that the academic director wanted to give her without a choice. She’d rather be an hourly employee, so she can decide which classes she wants to teach and which ones she doesn’t. She has worked under these circumstances since the beginning. She doesn’t like it and she has the choice to not sign it and seek employment elsewhere, but being a Taiwanese English teacher, all the other schools will do it, too. Or so she believes.
She works just as many hours or sometimes even more hours than the foreigners employed at her branch, but K**** wouldn’t dare mess with the foreigners in this way as they are absolutely required to sponsor a work-permit, health insurance, labor insurance, etc. But, they can screw their Taiwanese employees anytime they want.
So, I’m not sure what they’re doing is legal or illegal, but it’s immoral to treat their own Taiwanese citizens in this manner.
The school is owned by a very wealthy and well connected family, so they won’t have any legal repercussions.
Here is Taiwan!
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