by Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: bizmac/WikiCommons/CC BY 2.0
EARLIER THIS YEAR, the Lai administration announced plans to relax requirements that individuals aged 80 years or older, or who are between 70 and 79 but suffer from stage 2 cancer or above, need to pass a Barthel index examination before hiring a migrant caregiver. This was the result of legislation passed last year by the KMT-controlled legislature.
At the same time, Taiwan’s leading migrant worker advocacy groups, including the Taiwan International Workers’ Association, the Awakening Foundation, the Domestic Caretaker Union, Serikat Buruh Industri Perawatan Taiwan, and other groups, took a stand against this move. In particular, such groups have called attention to the fact that the move is merely aimed at expanding the pool of migrant caregivers, who work long hours for little pay, rather than taking any measures.
New measures would allow families to hire migrant caregivers from abroad, or migrant workers already in Taiwan who were originally hired on the basis of other employment categories, provided they pass a training course.
Still, migrant worker advocates have noted that this has resulted in backlash from some elements of society, who take the view that migrant workers may not want to take care of critically ill people and instead hope to care for the elderly, resulting in a shortage of care for the critically ill. It was expected that there would be a rush to hire migrant workers after the legal changes, but according to the Ministry of Labor, this has not yet occurred.
To this extent, criticisms have generally broken out against the notion of migrant workers transferring employment categories in the past. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were periodic outbursts from the Taiwanese public against migrant workers who sought to transfer employment to factories, with the claim that this would result in a lack of care for the elderly and critically ill. It is to be seen if this leads to efforts to restrict transferring employment categories down the line.
The perception was, ironically enough, that migrant workers sought to transfer to higher-paid factory jobs. But even then, one notes that migrant workers would be taking on the “3D”–dirty, dangerous, and demeaning jobs that Taiwanese do not want to work, including factory work. Migrant workers are largely employed in care for the elderly, in factories, as migrant fishermen, in agriculture, as well as forestry. And it proves absurd to blame migrant workers for wishing to transfer to more highly-paid positions, as Taiwanese themselves frequently seek to do.
The Taiwanese government has, in the past, generally sought to regulate migrant workers changing employment categories, only allowing this to occur in the event of extenuating circumstances such as assault by an employer, and seeking to regulate the channels by which migrant workers would obtain new jobs. Migrant workers are, in this sense, denied the right to freely sell their labor on the market.
Indeed, Taiwan’s migrant labor system already denies migrant workers the right to reside in Taiwan for more than 12 or 14 years, forcing them to leave even if they have built a life in Taiwan. Although new categories were introduced to allow workers classified as “intermediate skilled labor” to stay longer, control over designating workers to be part of these categories remains in the hands of employers.
Consideration of migrant worker issues by the government largely does not take into account their human rights or their rights as workers. One notes that migrant workers have long demanded an end to the exorbitant fees that they are charged by brokers for the arrangement of their work in Taiwan, as well as their transportation between their home country and Taiwan. Yet the Taiwanese government has demurred on taking steps to remedy what has sometimes been termed a form of modern debt bondage. This, too, may be the case with changes to recent laws regarding migrant workers.