Can you give us some comments regarding this issue…
What is the reason behind the labor freeze?
The Philippines deported 24 members of a suspected Manila-based telephone fraud ring - 14 Taiwanese and 10 Chinese - to China on February 2.
Taiwan wants an apology from the philippines for doing the deportation, but philippines did not want to apologize. Philippine defended its action by saying that the victims of the fraud ring were Chinese mainlanders and the evidence of the crime was in the hands of Chinese police.
Taipei - Taiwan on Tuesday expressed anger at the Philippines’ refusal to apologize for deporting 14 Taiwan criminal suspects to China, and was mulling a freeze on hiring Filipino workers
Recently some Taiwanese criminal elements were deported to China along with their Chinese cohorts from Manila upon China’s request. Taiwan asked the PHilippines govt to send the Taiwanese to Taiwan but the Phil Govt went ahead and sent them to China. This sets a bad precedent for the future because the TW govt wants Taiwanese citizens to be sent back to Taiwan if they commit crimes rather then to China.
Taiwan wants a formal apology from the PHil govt , which the latter has so far refused to offer.
So Taiwan is sqeezing the Phil workers. First a hiring freeze so that the present 70,000 odd thousand or so will all be gone in 3 years. IF Taiwan gets more pissed off they would immediately send all of them home (something they wont do). More Thai and other nationals will be replacing them in the future.
So far the Phil govt reaction is “meh, they can work in other countries or work at home”.
So who is going to do all the work that Taiwanese young people don’t want to do if Filipinos are not allowed to come to Taiwan to take care of old parents and work in factories?
I think Taiwanese think there is an inexhaustible supply of cheap workers from Asia that want to come to Taiwan, somehow I think that is not going to be case forever. They need the workers so expect this to blow over.
Indonesians, Thais, Vietnamese…
Some factory owners with guanxi will be pressuring the government to let Filipino workers into Taiwan. I would be surprised if the Taiwanese government actually froze the hiring of Filipino workers.
Childish and cringeworthy is my comment, junx. It’s obviously both pointless and vindictive to target Philippine citizens who couldn’t give a rat’s f-ck about political squabbles and will now be less inclined to support Taiwan’s viewpoint on political issues - but I wonder if it might turn out to be a good thing. The gubmint have done this before; a couple of years back they had a clampdown on illegal workers (ie., those who had done a bunk from slave-labour conditions in badly-run Taiwanese factories) and a friend of mine was a bit worried. Eventually she decided she’d had enough and just went home to pick up her life where she left off. I was in the Philippines not so long ago, so we had a chance to catch up and she’s doing just fine.
My point is - the Philippines is a country with enormous potential. If their history and culture had been just a little different, they could have been another Japan. Now if only they would stop fleeing the country and coming to work as virtual slaves in countries where they are looked down upon, exploited, and generally treated badly in exchange for a less-than-minimum wage, they might feel compelled to do something about their own economy. There is a prevailing attitude of hopelessness in the Philippines, where people believe that there are only two ways to success: go and work in a ‘rich’ country, or marry a rich foreigner. This defeatist outlook has brought the country to its knees; far from being a source of support, remittances from abroad just keep the country poor and dependent on a small contingent of hard-working expats. Oil wealth and foreign government aid are known to have similar effects.
This recent spat might bring home that, underneath it all, Taiwan is not that much more ‘developed’ (whatever that means) than the Philippines; or, conversely, that the Philippine people don’t have to leap as far as they think to achieve a decent standard of living in their own country.
But then again, maybe I’m just being hopelessly naive.
Getting off the point but I think the Phillipines will show it’s potential in the next 10 years or so, if they can sort out a few problems like the insurgencies and population growth rate and get away from the Catholic church control…there’s enormous human resources waiting to move back and contribute to their economy.
‘control’ is the right world headhoncho. I’m a Christian and the behaviour of the Catholic Church in the Philippines makes me absolutely livid. To teach people that somehow the route to salvation is to have as many kids as possible and live in poverty and misery is just evil; I read somewhere that the church actually made it quite clear to the president that they didn’t like his stance on birth control and, presumably, that if he continued with that unwise tack, there would be … trouble. WTF? The Church tells the president what to do? Something is rotten in the state of Central Luzon.
The Philippines has absolutely massive economic and social potential and it would be great to see that unleashed.
[quote=“finley”]Childish and cringeworthy is my comment, junx. It’s obviously both pointless and vindictive to target Philippine citizens who couldn’t give a rat’s f-ck about political squabbles and will now be less inclined to support Taiwan’s viewpoint on political issues - but I wonder if it might turn out to be a good thing. The gubmint have done this before; a couple of years back they had a clampdown on illegal workers (ie., those who had done a bunk from slave-labour conditions in badly-run Taiwanese factories) and a friend of mine was a bit worried. Eventually she decided she’d had enough and just went home to pick up her life where she left off. I was in the Philippines not so long ago, so we had a chance to catch up and she’s doing just fine.
My point is - the Philippines is a country with enormous potential. If their history and culture had been just a little different, they could have been another Japan. Now if only they would stop fleeing the country and coming to work as virtual slaves in countries where they are looked down upon, exploited, and generally treated badly in exchange for a less-than-minimum wage, they might feel compelled to do something about their own economy. There is a prevailing attitude of hopelessness in the Philippines, where people believe that there are only two ways to success: go and work in a ‘rich’ country, or marry a rich foreigner. This defeatist outlook has brought the country to its knees; far from being a source of support, remittances from abroad just keep the country poor and dependent on a small contingent of hard-working expats. Oil wealth and foreign government aid are known to have similar effects.
This recent spat might bring home that, underneath it all, Taiwan is not that much more ‘developed’ (whatever that means) than the Philippines; or, conversely, that the Philippine people don’t have to leap as far as they think to achieve a decent standard of living in their own country.
But then again, maybe I’m just being hopelessly naive.[/quote]
With some planing, English speaking countries could outsource jobs to the Philippines since they speak English. That might earn $600 a month and be able to stay in their home country. The money from these jobs could be invested and the Philippines could try to start developing higher paying more skilled jobs.
After this issue happen, Council of Labor Affairs has announced stricter screening procedures for new Filipino workers; those applying for jobs might need to wait four months for the screening process compared to the previous period of just 12 days. Slowing down the visa application process for overseas contract workers (OCWs) from the Philippines means that thousands of people who were originally scheduled to begin jobs in Taiwan will have to wait, and will not be able to begin sending money home to their families.
Hundreds of Filipino workers waiting their returned to work in Taiwan after slowing down the visa application. But lately, Taiwan Government planning a total froze of hiring a Filipino workers.
Taiwan help Philippines by employing workers to send millions of remittance in the country, otherwise, Filipino workers doing their job good and working very hard from their minimum wages of NT$17880 per month.
Taiwan total froze Filipino workers to come in country, it’s like Taiwan will start all over again just to hire and train another foreigners…
It would be great to see a figure how much Filipino factory workers helped their bosses earn by producing goods to be sold in Taiwan as well as exported.
i would let this blow over…when the financial crisis hit in 2008/2009 the gov’t threatened the same bs to give locals first chance on those unwanted jobs. to no one’s surprise, they couldn’t hire enough locals for those jobs so they had to open the doors back up again. every few years the same diplomatic trouble happens with some SE asian country. it’s in the news for a month, there is a visit by someone to somewhere, threats are made and then things go back to normal…no worries.
I’'ve heard loads of stories about them treating Taiwanese people in the same way you describe (it’s not just foreigners). Rather than pay an extra NT$10 an hour to keep someone good, they’d rather fire the guy and hire someone else who will work for less. Turnover rate in Taiwanese companies is pretty high, especially in the tech sector.
And that’s just the start. The local economy is actually very vital; money changes hands faster than in any country I’ve ever been to. What’s missing is the trust and the legal framework to enable large transactions, and the tax structure and bureaucracy positively encourage grey markets. Filipinos don’t seem to be capable of doing large business deals without attempting to rip someone off or cut corners as a knee-jerk reflex. I guess they’re just not used to handling large sums of money.
[quote=“finley”]‘control’ is the right world headhoncho. I’m a Christian and the behaviour of the Catholic Church in the Philippines makes me absolutely livid. To teach people that somehow the route to salvation is to have as many kids as possible and live in poverty and misery is just evil; I read somewhere that the church actually made it quite clear to the president that they didn’t like his stance on birth control and, presumably, that if he continued with that unwise tack, there would be … trouble. WTF? The Church tells the president what to do? Something is rotten in the state of Central Luzon.
The Philippines has absolutely massive economic and social potential and it would be great to see that unleashed.[/quote]
Same thing in Latin America. The Catholic church has blocked educational reforms -especially any kind of sexual education in countries with pregnacies as early as 9 years old- medicine -forbidden everything from contraception methods, condom distribution, therapeutic abortions and in vitro fertilization- and is more a political force than anything else, not to mention serious economic interests in real estate, drugs, and other niceties.
While the diplomatic bruhaha is quite an issue, the vengeful acts against the workers do make suspicious minds wonder if there is more than just the usual treatment of workers as a nuisance. Filipino workers are more “mafan” as they are a bit more educated, some speak English and have better contact with the outside world. In summary, they are harder to cheat. Make more of a fuss. They have more options -say Canada if trained as nurses and doctors, and there are many of those.
The number of Filipino workers has decreased substantially in recent years. Other SE Asians are taking their place. One could wonder if this incident is being used to open the door to even more Chinese workers or if other economic pressures are at play. It is a difficult discourse to mantain, defend Taiwanese sovereignity while the simbiosis with China gets stronger every day.
So who is going to do all the work that Taiwanese young people don’t want to do if Filipinos are not allowed to come to Taiwan to take care of old parents and work in factories?[/quote]
Indonesians