TIWA (Taiwan International Workers’ Association see: www.tiwa.org.tw) is a non-profit, non-government association devoted to promoting cooperation between foreign and local workers, improving the working conditions and social environment for foreign workers in Taiwan, and improving foreign workers’ rights and benefits.
Until now TIWA has been focusing mainly on helping blue collar migrant workers (such as foreign laborers or domestic help) but would now like to expand services to include white collar foreign workers (such as language teachers or any foreign office staff whose employment contracts place them under Taiwanese labor laws).
Our goal is to provide you with a central and official resource for all of the latest laws and regulations that would affect your work in Taiwan and to provide you with a public forum so that you can express your concerns, ask questions and give suggestions for legal change. In the near future we are planning to hold regular face-to-face meetings and workshops to help you clarify your rights as a foreign white collar worker in Taiwan.
If you are a foreigner either currently working in Taiwan as a white collar worker or planning to live and work in Taiwan as a white collar worker we would like you to take a moment to reply to this post. Please tell us which labor law topics you would like to see addressed or questions you have about labor law in Taiwan.
No questions as yet, but I think its a sound idea. However, there seems to be very little foreign language, at least on the link you provided. Why is it mainly in Chinese? Seems a bit pointless to me. Your target audience I’m sure would prefer English, Bahasa or Tagalog.
How should foreign white collar employees access labor mediation when having a dispute with employer over terms of employment?
How can we prevent employers from exploiting the fact that foreign white collar workers are dependent on their work permit for residency in Taiwan?
Can foreigners with marriage-based ARC or permanent residence work in Buxibans even if they do not hold a university degree or are not native speakers of English? What is the rule in each county and city, and are those rules in compliance with the law?
White collar foreign workers should be permitted some access to funds available to Taiwanese workers to support law suits by the Legal Aid Society against employers who break employment contracts.
*Foreign white collar workers (or any worker for that matter) should be allowed to take supplementary jobs or do freelance work without having to worry about tax categories.
Right now, if I take a do a one-off translation or editing job for company X and they refuse to categorize the job as ‘9B’ – written freelance work – then technically this is considered illegal, and the CLA could refuse to renew my work permit as they check tax records to make sure you don’t receive income from anyone other than the company providing an ARC.
How should foreign white collar employees access labor mediation when having a dispute with employer over terms of employment?
Go to CLA?
Ask a Taiwanese colleague to mediate/help translation?
How can we prevent employers from exploiting the fact that foreign white collar workers are dependent on their work permit for residency in Taiwan?
Different types of visa provide different rights.
APRC, JFRV, missionary visa, …
Can foreigners with marriage-based ARC or permanent residence work in Buxibans even if they do not hold a university degree or are not native speakers of English? What is the rule in each county and city, and are those rules in compliance with the law?
Foreigners with marriage-based ARC; don’t they have “open work rights”, which entitles them to do any kind of work in Taiwan?
There’s something about 1 year previous working experience required with a Masters degree and 2 years with a Bachelors degree. Other people definitely can define the finer points of this law.
Counties and cities may have different approaches towards the law, based upon various conditions.
Since this is an NGO, this is where volunteers come in. People like you and me. Hopefully we can find ways to give to as well as take from a service like this.
[color=#000080]* How can we prevent employers from exploiting the fact that foreign white collar workers are dependent on their work permit for residency in Taiwan?
I am currently working at a company that has been giving all of the teachers pay cuts (Taiwanese and foreign) and has been requiring us to give more and more while receiving less and less pay.
Everyone is very upset about this, both local and foreign workers. As a group we feel that our hands are completely tied because all of the foreign workers depend on this job for their ARC’s. Some of the teachers are working toward permanent residency and loosing this ARC would set them back another couple of years.
This puts both the Taiwanese and the foreign workers at a disadvantage. The company has shown that they are willing to fire any individual who doesn’t go along with all of this, so would like to organize and demand to be treated better.
What are our rights? Is this something that we can do, or, because we are foreign workers, do we have to stick it out or find another job?[/color]
Hi everyone - thank you for your posts, questions and topic suggestions. TIWA is currently in the process of collecting this information and will announce a public forum in the upcoming months. One question that was asked “Are ESL teachers white collar workers?” - yes they are (as distinguished from migrant or ‘blue-collar’ workers).
In my experience at a certain chain “American School”/ “American Kindergarden”, after being asked to finish work at the kindergarden by the end of the week I initially accepted it (yeah, we have a good life here, well paid, I’ll get another job, etc). Then I met an old Filipino friend who said don’t take it, you have rights and it’s all there in the Labor Standards Act.
It’s not unreasonable/ beligerent/ bolshie to ask for your basic legal rights and decency.
They rely on people not knowing or not doing anything.
So I looked up the above law and discovered (surprise surprise):
1 they can’t sack you without good reason (though I’m sure there are ways to fit one of the exceptions).
2. even with good reason, you still have rights.
3. they have to give you between 10 and 30 days notice depending on length of service.
4 they have to give you one month’s pay for every year’s continuous service.
So I printed out the law and showed it to my manager who said something like I hope you’re not being unreasonable/picking a fight/ being bolshie. I said I was just quoting the law. I thought not much more about it but despite her bravado, she must have been worried enough to talk to the boss, a Mr Chen, because two days later he was there and told me they would ‘sort something out’. It took another couple of weeks but they came up with one months wages (at the rate they declare), which I was happy to settle for.
As well as pride and a bit of cash, this had a point which is that I stayed on until the end of my contract in the afternoons, when presumably they would have dumped me from there pretty soon afterwards otherwise. That or my bolshieness sealed my fate at the other school, but I doubt they would have renewed my contract though. They did cut my hours and ask me to provide lesson plans for every lesson, presumably to encourage me to leave, but I stayed to the end.
Is it unrealistic/ beligerent/ militant to quote the law or expect decency? How about a basically nice school that wants/needs to get rid of you - is it reasonable to ask them for several months pay if that’s what you’re entitled to?