If they don’t like Taiwan, they should come back to Hong Kong. I know a few of my neighbours are in need of some nannies. 
Well that’s a sweet gesture. I’ll be sure to tell Gil and the other workers. Dingleberry.
This is rich
But to make sure that workers did not sign such agreements under duress, the bureau has decided to set up a foreign laborer consultant service center at the CKS International Airport to give foreign workers a last chance to appeal their cases prior to leaving Taiwan, Kuo said.
Where do they put the complaint box?
More info here
I think the DPP and the Presidential Office should follow the actions of the Canadian Government. They should set up a fund of 12.5 million dollars to help Philippino migrants in Taiwan 
cbc.ca/story/canada/national … 51117.html
Ottawa is set to pay millions of dollars in compensation to descendants of Chinese workers who were charged a head tax to enter the country, CBC News has learned.
The government has agreed to acknowledge the tax was discriminatory and will pay $12.5 million into a new foundation. The agreement comes following negotiations with the the National Congress of Chinese Canadians, a group appointed to negotiate redress.
The federal government imposed a $50 head tax on Chinese immigrants in 1885 after Chinese workers were no longer needed to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The amount was raised to $500 in 1903. In 1923 the head tax was replaced by the Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from the country altogether. The tax was the equivalent of about two years’ wages at the time. About 80,000 Chinese were singled out.
It wasn’t fully repealed until 1967.
The Congress said it is willing to hear proposals about how the money should be spent.
I’m not sure if someone has made a flyer for this, but the Taiwan International Workers Association is planning a big march from Taipei Station on Sunday December 11 starting at 12:30pm. The protest of migrant workers and various labor rights groups are calling for justice for migrants in Taiwan who have been subjected to inhuman working conditions, withholding of wages, illegal wage deductions, violence, and intimidation.
All are welcome to join the migrants in solidarity and call for an abolishment of all migrant brokers who have shamelessly profited from this system human trafficking.
Also, on Thursday December 8 at 10am at the FPG Headquarters building in 201, Tung Hwa (Dun Hua) North Road, Taipei, labor groups are organizing another protest to call for justice for FPG workers who were beaten forcibly expatriated on August 2nd for their role in a strike in July. Once again all are welcome.
POTS will be running another piece this Thursday about the ongoing struggle of the Gil Lebria and the FPG migrants.
Again, great stuff AndyO and Pots.
Don’t want to Shanghai your thread AndyO, but met an interesting organisation of Indonesian migrant workers here in HK over the weekend. They held a rally as an aside to the pro-democracy march. Great stuff it was too.
I didn’t really understand the link they were making, hell it was in Indonesian after all, but they were anti-WTO and pushing for more pay and rights for domestics and mother migrant workers. They were also protesting the all-too-common cases whereby domestics are kicked out after getting impregnated by their employers.
As the relatively later arrivals the Indonesians have suffered severely here from underpayment, beatings and virtual incarceration - no days off, etc. The Filipinos, by contrast, have been here longer and tend to have better support networks.
It was good to see.
The group will have another demo in the lead up to the WTO meeting this Sunday at Victoria Park (near the handball court - if anyone is interested)and the following Sunday starting at 9am.
As for your comment Xianggangduli . . . you are taking the piss aren’t you? I mean the flag, the independence thing . . the attitude . . tell me it’s satire or something. Please!
HG
thanks for the info andy…can this be put into the events section so everyone can be made aware of it?
AndyO -
Just curious, is the Taiwan International Workers Association affiliated with the Wobblies(IWW) group?
I’ll repeat this again, Taiwans treatment of laborers from Filipino tends to be poor outright from the sharks that bring em in like they were smuggling humans. They get paid large amounts of money per Filipino worker they bring in, typically taking up to a year or so of the Filipino worker’s wage. Once these workers no longer have a ‘benefit’ they work the system to send them back.
We were almost forced to have a few of our Filipino friends sent back from this sort of corruption. It was really disguisting…
Continuing, Taiwan has a lot of laws that are unfair and unjust going back decades. We need both the Pan-Greens and the Pan-Blues to work together to stamp these old laws out.
Only if Taiwan begins to let people, whom were not born in Taiwan, but have lived in Taiwan for years, pay taxes, etc to vote, then you can expect Taiwanese political candidates to work their best to reform. Until then they can almost safely ignore the wrong doings.
First of all, the slave wages were induced by your government. Your government encourages the slave labour conditions found in many Chinese factories and mines. Their lack of enforcement, for example, has led to the deaths of over 2700 Chinese people the first half of this year due to mining accidents alone.
Have you been to any Chinese factories in China? I’ve seen masses of little girls working 16 hours a day, packed in cheap warehouses with only 1 exit manned by an armed guard. Unfortunately contrary to your stereotype, we won’t accept child labor and anyone who looks remotely beneath 21 is not hired due to the plethora of fake IDs.
Continuing, it feels to me that the CCP sends more people to inspect our factories and any other “foreign” factories as opposed to yours. Yours won’t cause any world controversies as they can cover it up. Our clients have strict requirements for workers, running from maximum hours of work per day, minimum wage, age requirements, factory safety, etc. Any breach and we lose lucrative contracts. Our clients are also not given specific dates when they could visit particular factories and can drop in for inspection whenever they wish.
Bear, done and done.
TWCowboy - I’m not exactly sure if they are affilated with the IFF, but this is their website.
HCG - that’s excellent - I wish I could be there for the protests, but I gotta stay in TW. Gi Estrada from the Asia Pacific Migrant’s Mission (who is helping out in the FPG migrant’s case) will be there, as well as a number of Filipino activists from Anak ng Bayan (a left-wing organization I wrote about a few weeks ago in POTS)
Shrimp Crackers - Have you seen Mardis Gras: Made in China? I saw it at the Camden Film Festival and it was an amazing
documentary of how those gaudy Mardis Gras beads are made by girls in the sweatshops of China only to be thrown at mammary jiggling American hoochies in New Orleans. The best part was when the filmmaker showed pictures of the revelers baring their jugs to the giggling Chinese factory girls.
“AHHH! So embarrassing! He he he!!! Why do they do that for these beads! They’re so UGLY!”
[quote=“AndyO”]Shrimp Crackers - Have you seen Mardis Gras: Made in China? I saw it at the Camden Film Festival and it was an amazing
documentary of how those gaudy Mardis Gras beads are made by girls in the sweatshops of China only to be thrown at mammary jiggling American hoochies in New Orleans. The best part was when the filmmaker showed pictures of the revelers baring their jugs to the giggling Chinese factory girls.
“AHHH! So embarrassing! He he he!!! Why do they do that for these beads! They’re so UGLY!”[/quote]I am just going to assume you are saying this out of admiration for the personal freedom these revelers are allowed to express.
[quote=“AndyO”]Shrimp Crackers - Have you seen Mardis Gras: Made in China? I saw it at the Camden Film Festival and it was an amazing
documentary of how those gaudy Mardis Gras beads are made by girls in the sweatshops of China only to be thrown at mammary jiggling American hoochies in New Orleans. The best part was when the filmmaker showed pictures of the revelers baring their jugs to the giggling Chinese factory girls.[/quote]
I saw that documentary, actually. Very much liked the premise and the idea behind the film, and the cultural/economic gap was really jarring to see side-by-side.
But I thought the film-makers clearly had a political, anti-globalization, anti-capitalist agenda, and this affected the movie’s message. As a native Chinese speaker who’s lived in far worse than the dormitories shown in the movie… I think the film-maker misleads the viewer on a few key points.
The owner of the factory (who I believe is from Hong Kong and not Taiwan) came across, to me, as a decent and genuine man… at least, as decent as a capitalist making far more than his workers can possibly be. He tries to speak in English, which probably seemed like a good idea to him, but struggles enough with the speech to make him come across as nervous and shifty. His threats of “punishing” the girls for not meeting the quota really aren’t as harsh when explained in Chinese, as compared to when it appeared in English subtitles on the screen.
I saw the movie with several other mainland Chinese friends. We all had the same perspective: these workers had it lucky. They had a lovely work campus, worked reasonable shifts, and were paid (comparatively) very well. I think their pay translated in the 800-1000RMB/month range. Pathetic by American standards (a point the filmmakers were careful to make), but a fortune to anyone from ‘xiangxi’ (especially without income tax + room/board taken care of). There was no physical abuse, no threats of any physical abuse, no child labor.
The work was menial, physical work… but what do peasants do when they’re outside of these factories? Peasant life isn’t idyllic; it’s hard, back-breaking, life-shortening work.
Anyways, just wanted to throw in my two cents on this point.
Perhaps this should be moved to another thread, but I definitely see your point. In fact, I watched the movie with my uncle and his comment was “Well, is this an optimistic film or a pessimistic film? You have the seeds of unions forming, you have workers who are choosing which factory they want to work in, and after all, look at how much has improved in China during the past 20 odd years.” A Chinese woman actually spoke up at the Q&A session (the film was shown in Maine back in the States) and said she had grown up in China and Taiwan, but had spent the past 25 years in New England. She said that from her point of view and experiences, it didn’t seem like the bead factory conditions were that different from New England a hundred plus years ago. She added that when she first moved to the US, some of her relatives in China who she hadn’t spoken to in years wrote her asking for a couple hundred dollars just to apply to work in a Nike factory.
Not a big fan of globalization though. Can’t see a country like the Philippines ever catching up with the rate that China is growing - the corporations and landlords would never allow it.
No doubt about it, globalization will reward the nations that have their act together, and harshly punish those that do not. The fortunes of nations will be just like the fortunes of individual families in any capitalist society: get your act together, and you thrive; don’t, and you will crumble.
The negatives associated with capitalist societies have been studied and fought over for centuries. Now, even the most capitalist of societies have some sort of social security to lessen the pain for the poor. But you’re right, in a globalized world, there is no equivalent social security for a poor nation that can’t get its act together (like the Philippines). They’re left to struggle. I do think this’ll be a source of real international conflict over the next century.
Migrants in Formosa Plastics Corporation Foil CLA
It was good to see an excellent turn-out at the migrant workers rally last Sunday. It was a real moving experience to be marching with so many workers of different nationalities - there was a great feeling of solidarity. I talked to Joel Puda, one of the FPG workers, for a long time and he showed me his hand that had been mangled by a machine in the factory. It was a web of raised black scars and felt rock hard to the touch. He could hardly bend his fingers, much less make a fist. The brokers told him he didn’t have labor insurance to cover the hospital bills and the weekly physical therapy sessions, so he has to pay out of his own pocket. The brokers’ claim is pretty dubious since the deductions for labor insurance show up on his monthly pay slips. I hope the kind of worker solidarity we all felt on Sunday will be a trend. The best part was at the end when the sound system started pumpin a hip hop remix of Axel F (theme fro Beverly Hills Cop) and the crowd got down.
I just got this update from the Migrante Party Taiwan Chapter:
Stop the Continued Harassment of Migrants in FPC!
We deplore the continued harassment of Filipino workers at the Formosa Plastics Corporation (FPC) even after the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) and three legislators had just conducted a visit at the FPC plant on December 9. One of those being harassed is Joel Puda who was one of those allowed by the CLA to air out the workers grievances to them on that day.
On December 13, Joel
I finally got an update from Gi Estrada about the Gil Lebria situation. Funny no one attempted to notify Gil about the outcome of his own case…
[b]Two days ago, I called Gil’s lawyer and she told me that Gil won in his criminal case against the two perpetrators who beat him up. They were sentenced to 5 months each in jail but they can opt to pay a fine in liue of serving time in jail. Gil can now file a civil case for damages.
The only problem is the decision was made last November and MECO never informed us about this development.
I will also inform Gil about this development and ask him if he would like to pursue the civil case.
Gi[/b]
Currently Gil is working in Kuwait at an oil refinery where, he has reportedly been “victimized by an illegal recruiter.” According to Gil, he and the other workers were not paid for two months and they were only issued visitors visas for three months. But once again, because of his persistence, as well as the help of a sympathetic Philippines government official based in Kuwait and a former Migrante Officer, he was able to successfully get his full pay plus his time card. Since then, many migrants have started going to him for assistance.
“Of course that is still the Middle East and because of what he has done he might be deported anytime,” Gi Estrada told me recently. “His employer is very powerful and a government official. In fact when he first arrived 300 mostly South Asians were on strike.”
I’ll keep ya’ll posted on the ongoing Gil saga.
Hey folks,
It’s been a while, but I spoke with Gil Lebria yesterday via chat and he told me that he is currently stranded in Libya along with thousands of other OFWs, who are calling on the Philippine embassy to allow them safe passage out of the country. He told me that they have been harassed by armed men and many of the workers are running low on food and water.
Here is an article about the ordeal in which Gil is quoted: