I work for a university and have been told by my university that I can work, outside, 4 hours a week at another teaching institution, and UNLIMITED hours anywhere that is NOT a teaching institution.
Can I really work legally at places that have not granted me a work permit, as long as I do have a work permit at one place? If so, what then, fundamentally, is a work permit?
I have income from freelance work and also from a local company that I run. (My university job is for pocket money.) Is all this legal? If it’s not…sshhh, don’t tell me.
Oops. I think the posting should be in the ‘Work Related’ sub forum. Can the Moderator move the post down there?
I say a Hail Mary for repentance:
Hail Mary full of grace
Swing those beads around your waist
Swing them high and swing them low
Go, Mary, go go go!
Do you mean “legally” or “practically”?
Legally, no, you cannot work at ANY job (including the four extra hours of teaching!) that is not the job listed on your ARC (assuming you are granted that ARC on the strength of having been hired to perform a certain job by one particular organization). Tutoring and freelancing is a grey area, and most people I’ve talked to who have some reason to know feel that they are actually not illegal as they do not involve going to a fixed place of work, being supervised and receiving insurance and other benefits.
I’ve heard of foreigners getting into hot water for singing during band breaks, however, in a situation where they are not being paid or supervised…depends on who’s wielding the police batons at any given moment. In fact, this was the sort of thing that ended my budding musical career in Taiwan (that, and the machine guns. But I digress.)
Practically, the chances of being caught dictate whether you “can” work in this way. Most people would never be caught. There is, however, a small class of people who get pregnant the first time, who only have to walk past the refrigerator to gain weight, etc. If you belong to this class of people, you might want to give the matter serious consideration, because you just KNOW you’ll be caught within a week. Teaching kindy is risky. Teaching English to some company class during lunch might be less risky in terms of being raided by the police. It’s your call.
You didn’t hear it from me, and I didn’t hear it from them, but a certain leading labor organization whose initials are CLA told me recently that the way around “no freelancing” is merely to get a permit to work, well, anywhere, and then just do what I wanted to do. 
A ha! Just as I suspected.
Actually, I know that is what the law says, but I am wondering why every university in Taiwan tells its teachers they can teach up to 4 hours a week at another teaching institution. (And I am wondering why my university in particular said they don’t care how many hours I work at non-teaching institutions.)
Are there some generally agreed upon outside-the-law rules inside the government of how they will handle work permits and whatever else? If so, I am curious what these rules are. If one is going to break the law, it is best to break the law in a way that the Taiwanese believe is in keeping with these ‘rules’ that are actually more important than the law.
So suddenly your university has become a legal arbitrator for working rules in Taiwan. Make sure you get them to put it in writing… in Chinese