What are you willing to do to protect your rights in Taiwan?
- Take part in demonstrations or protests.
- Join and support a foreign teachers labor union.
- Pay money or subscribe to labor organizations such as TIWA to work on specific issues.
- Nothing, I don’t want to protect my rights.
- Other (please leave comments).
0 voters
TIWA Meeting Summary
Sadly only about 20 people showed up for the meeting, plus 3 TIWA staff, 3 NIA representatives, and 2 CLA representatives. Maoman, myself, a few other Forumosans, some Hess main office folk, and other foreigners were present to make our case.
We spent about 3 hours at the meeting discussing various issues with few if any solid answers to our questions, and mostly being stonewalled by the CLA and NIA representatives. At the end of the meeting, Maoman asked for name cards and was told - by every representative present - that they had conveniently forgotten their name cards (and apparently their names, too).
Unfortunately, we didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know, but I’ll summarize here the main points I took down as notes:
-
Work permits are as we understand them currently. 14 hours minimum for ARC sponsorship, 6 hours minimum for part-time work up to 32 hours total maximum.
-
Two companies, two permits. Two locations for the same company, still 2 permits. As we know already.
-
There are 2 originals (真本) issued of a work permit, 1 for the school and 1 for the employee. Both are mailed to the place of work, and there is no notice to the employer that one must be issued to the employee. You will need your work permit if you intend to apply for a second work permit, and you can write a letter to the CLA to request a copy of your work permit (and contract) - they will issue it to you directly, according to the representative present.
-
Maoman had a good point here, that the CLA should simply issue the original to the employee directly, together with a copy of the labor regulations.
-
Good news for HESS or other chain school employees with too few hours: the clauses in HESS’s handbooks stating that you can’t take other work without approval are illegal, and you are under no obligation to tell your first company that you want to work for a second company, but another job again must be 14 hours to be added to your ARC as a resident sponsor.
-
APRC regulations are essentially chaos, and the representatives from the NIA could offer no solid or clear understanding of what the requirements are for an APRC. They stated that “continuous residence” means back-to-back ARCs with no gap at all for 5 years, and had no comments as far as the “183 day” stipulations in the law. They also stated that someone who worked 3 years, then married for 2 years, would not be granted an APRC since the residence was not “continuous”.
-
If your employer wants to cancel your contract before it ends (fire you), they are in theory required to obtain a signature of acceptance from the employee. If you are involved in a labor dispute, the CLA has assured us that they will put a stay on our work permit so that our ARC will not be cancelled, and we will be allowed to stay for the time necessary to dispute the case. During this time, we can find a new job but the first employer can tell the CLA that you should not be given a work permit for any reason, which the CLA claims they would investigate before deciding whether or not to issue a work permit.
-
We also learned that every Buxiban teacher in Taiwan is entitled to 14 days of unpaid “personal leave” per year, and 30 days of sick leave which is paid at half the normal rate of pay, unless it is for a work-related injury in which case it is full pay - evidence would be necessary in the case of sick leave. In the second year at the same company, you are entitled to 7 further days of paid leave. A school cannot make you find substitutes, etc.
The most worthwhile aspects of the meeting were showing some faces to these departments, and meeting Mrs. Wu Jing Ru, who runs the TIWA. The organization’s staff seemed extremely understanding of our position, and told the representatives many times throughout the discussion what the differences were between the laws and the cases that TIWA sees every day. She told us the series of steps that we are going to need to take as a group to affect change. Until recently, foreigners working in Taiwan were not allowed to demonstrate or protest against the government but TIWA fought the government and made them give us those rights. In short, to affect change, we will need to exercise them.
We need to organize press conferences, demonstrations/protests, and in my opinion a labor union (which we are also allowed to do but to my knowledge, to date, have not). According to Jing Ru, the only way the bureaucrats will listen to anything is if it makes a big stink in the media, and other than that no one will budge.
I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to hold a little informal meet & greet to get a better idea of how many people are interested in being proactive in the community, and a great time to do that would be next Sunday (12/13) at Taipei Main Station, South gate 2 at 12:30pm, at the MENT (Migrants Empowerment Network in Taiwan) semi-annual National Migrants Rally.
There are some 360,000 migrant workers in Taiwan, and the main focus on this year’s rally is to promote the rights stipulated in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that all migrant workers need at least 1 day off per week - you may or may not know, but the vast majority of the Indonesian, Filipino, Thai, and Vietnamese caregivers you see walking around with elderly Taiwanese in wheelchairs are expected to work 7 days a week, 365 days a year in most cases, seldom given permission by their bosses to leave the house for any reason.
We have it good compared to these workers, but we’re all foreigners here and we need to support each other if we hope to accomplish anything. So come next Sunday and meet with us, meet the people from the dozen or so organizations supporting this rally, and let’s talk about what we need to do to secure our rights!