Yeah. I wondered where my boss’s connections went when the labour affairs centre ripped up the contract.
I was awarded severance, vacation and my sick leaves.
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Aww, I love hearing good abuse.
Same here. And my new employers offered me rock-like support, they don’t approve of cowboy buxiban bosses any more than the workers they victimize do.
I find the totally defeatist and us vs them tone of Taiwan_Luthiers to be out of keeping with the reality. The facts are these: it’s quite simple (and free or a few hundred TWD, I forget now) to file a complaint at Taipei City Hall and compel the employer to attend mediation.
One can then take the result of that mediation, if unsuccessful, to the Legal Aid Foundation and make an application for a free lawyer. A decision comes back within 10 days and, if successful, you now have a lawyer to help fight your case.
The district and high court provide free interpreters (mine were excellent) and I have found the judges to generally be patient and fair in their approach. The issues in the case were treated seriously and sufficient time was spent in oral debate. At the end of my case, which went to appeal, the rights I acquired (upon marriage to a Taiwanese) to be treated as a Taiwanese worker would be were upheld and years of pension contributions I had been deprived of must now be repaid.
Taiwan makes it practically free for Taiwanese and foreigners without the necessary means to get legal aid and fight for their labor rights. Employers who break the rules can be held to account. When you talk about the issue as if there’s something wrong with it requiring personal effort to defend your rights, you just sound complacent. Of course it comes down, ultimately, to oneself (and any personal support you have available) having to put in the work, because it’s one’s own rights that have been violated and oneself who will receive the full benefit if any claim is successful.
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Maybe over a beer or 10. Definitely not plastered on the Internet.
I’m glad to hear that you had such a good experience. Interpreters and judges are a mixed bag.
It’s free, but mediators are also a mixed bag.
To clarify, you need to go to the labor department (usually at city hall) in whichever city/county you work in, regardless of where you live.
Or alternatively you can go straight to court, but then the court will order mediation anyway, possibly over multiple sessions, and then you do need to pay for it (with a partial refund if the mediation is successful).
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The worst part was the mediation; the mediator was able to stop my having an interpreter by claiming that she would conduct the mediation in English and Chinese, but when she began, her first words (in Chinese), were she would not be speaking English. Her whole attitude was appalling, and she was openly unfair to me, letting my ex-boss and her husband shout all over us when my wife spoke, but going crazy when we dared raise any objections when they spoke. “Shoot up! Shoot up!” she yelled, “I lawyer! I lawyer!” Well, by then I knew the mediation was just a paper-filling exercise, so I rolled my eyes and told her that she was simply a ridiculous figure. My wife is still telling me to “Shoot up!” on occasion, we both found that most amusing.
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My boss tried the exact same thing. lmao.
Government told him to stfu. Figuratively.
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Oh, also, one occasion the high court forgot to order the interpreter and none was available. The judge pressured me into proceeding without one, saying that the issues discussed wouldn’t require an interpreter. I knew that once I agreed, this claim would turn out to be false, but my wife and lawyer shared the same Taiwanese mindset of placing what is convenient over what is in one’s best interests, so they agreed. That was a miserable day.
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Fire the lawyer. Or pick a lawyer that can translate.
Fortunately the one I often recommend is a Taiwanese Canadian.
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I’d had two years off work with health problems from the bullying in that job, there wasn’t any money for lawyers. I had a legal aid one, and you get the one they pick out for you. One was excellent, one was effective, one was hopeless.
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Totally get it. I developed a stomach ulcer from mine. 9 months of eating lean food and no booze sucked.
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Mine was it made my angina worse. The ex-boss knew about my condition, and her and her husband repeatedly tried to cause scenes in and around the courtroom to try and cause me stress. Her husband even had to be restrained by court police on one occasion. Seeing me deal with their tactics without giving them a reaction, they began complaining in court to the judge that I was “too lively,” while they wrote in their filings that if my health was as bad as they say, “I should have died a thousand times.” They had some old man in their family writing the filings (before they got a lawyer) and the stuff was vile filth like that. My wife pointed out one phrase they kept using, about hoping I would “close my hand,” an idiom which implies criminality on the person’s part, and it was similar trash for months on end.
That sounds downright criminal. Did you record them?
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No, I just controlled myself. Another time the husband’s father told me to “fuck off” inside the district court. It was nasty, gutter stuff, but for me the best way was to ignore them. I do have a criminal complaint filed about the ex-boss, I think you may remember, she lied to the officials when they visited her school that a student who had been working illegally at her school for months was actually not employed there and was doing a demo that day. Waiting for a date with the prosecutor after months of delays initially due to Covid.
I also reported her and her cousin for violating my personal data; they admitted doing so, but the prosecutor refused to prosecute on bullshit excuses, saying they had a constitutional right to violate my personal data but without ever stating which article. That was really depressing.
Having the government help you resolve employment problems can be a good or mediocre gamble. Take the gamble anyways, far too many employers think employees won’t go against them so they pull all kinds of bullshit. And yeah it would be wise to fight them towards the end of your employment so they don’t make your time there more hell than it already is. A side note, the Taiwanese should use collectivism to their advantage instead of allowing it to enslave them. Mindlessly and blindly following orders will put you in deep shit. They say they don’t have a choice but you’ve gotta fight the devil like you mean it.
I work at three schools as a FET and no they don’t treat me better than the Taiwanese teachers, one school is actually treating me worse–they micromanage everything I do. I am a “troublemaker” to them because I would bring work issues to the local labor department, MOE, and MOL. Yet, they can’t fire me easily either because I make sure I do a damn good job so that they can’t use much against me. Thankfully, the other schools trust my judgment and knows I am a serious teacher so they will back me up. Even if this shitty school has the power to fire me they won’t do so recklessly because they will have to explain to my other schools and to the government about unfair/wrongful dismissal. People hate losing face in Taiwan if you can use it without being sued for defamation do it. If I didn’t scare them a bit last semester they wouldn’t have backed off as much. They gave their last FET a bunch of shit too but I wasn’t going to put up with that same shit.
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Even your good performance can be twisted by the time you reach the courtroom; when asked by the judge to explain why, despite my ex-boss’s claim I was a terrible teacher, I received tens of thousands in bonuses each year and was being paid 150 an hour more than anyone else, she said: “We had to reward him because he was so temperamental”?!
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Salty and petty people will twist the story in their favor. In court, they don’t want to be found as the bad guy so they will make ridiculous claims. But then again the employer has more authority than the employee so makes no sense that the employee would be the abusive one, it’s often quite the opposite. Still, better to put up a fight if need to than be one obedient sheep giving your power away.
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My victory has all kinds of unpleasant consequences for my former employer, above and beyond what they have to pay me. The finding that there was a working relationship means that she should have been paying employment insurance for me:
“An insured unit failing to enroll its employees for employment insurance in accordance with this Act shall be subject to a fine ten times of the insurance premiums for the period from the date of hire to the date before the actual enrolment or the date of termination of employment.” (Employment Insurance Act)
The actual amount is not that much in my case, it’s a bit less than 1000TWD a month for 7 years, so around 85,000TWD but multiplied by ten… well, ouch!
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That school will close down, I reckon. You aren’t the only teacher who they haven’t been paying for, I guess.
What about your pension? Did they have to pay it for the previous 7 years?
They have only had three foreign teachers. Neither of them was married to a Taiwanese, so the pension is not an issue. One is doing very well and won’t sue, the other is too lazy to sue. The fines, however, might encourage them to shut up shop and try reopening (perhaps using the pandemic as the justification), and my wife takes the same view as yourself, that it’s a strong possibility.
Eligibility for pension begins from date of marriage, so for me runs from 2016 to 2019, when the job ended.