Opposition to Amendments in the Taiwan Employment Services Act

We, the undersigned, do hereby state our unequivocal opposition to the most recent legislation being promulgated in the Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China on Taiwan, Amending Article 60 of the Employment Service Act and the implementation of the Guarantor System for minority migrant workers.

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We are against a proposal to amend Article 60 of the Employment Service Act (ESA) in the Legislative Yuan. This pertains to the employer's responsibility to pay for the airfare and detention fees of foreign workers who are legally deported by police authorities. This includes those caught or who surrender for overstaying in Taiwan and for escaping from their employers.

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This is the last nail to the coffin of the migrant workers, so to speak. In practice, many employment contracts especially for caretakers already indicate that employers have the right to deduct the worker's unpaid salary and bank deposit to pay for the repatriation and detention costs of the latter. In addition to this, there are also agreements made between the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) and their counterparts from labor exporting countries for a guarantor system to ensure payment for these costs.

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We question the legality of the said contracts and even the agreements made by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) of Taiwan with its foreign counterparts. It is very clear that these are in violation of Article 60 of the Employment Services Act in its present and not yet amended form.

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The amendment is being made at a time when the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) announced publicly an increase in the penalty for so-called illegal employers and workers. In essence this is a crackdown on undocumented migrants and criminalizes them. This will inevitably lead to human rights violations, as many migrants who do surrender or are apprehended by the police are intimidated into identifying their employers. These migrants who have no access to legal counsel are threatened with repatriation.

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Utilizing such methods in dealing with undocumented migrants will not solve the runaway problem among the workers. The CLA should instead, seriously address why the migrants abscond from their places of employment.The most common reasons for legal workers to abscond from their employers include heavy workloads, inadequate food, physical and sexual abuse, as well as excessive, illegal collections of fees by manpower agencies and labor brokers. Other migrants run away because they were being arbitrarily repatriated and their employment contracts have expired.

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Legislators should be also aware of these problems and be persuaded not to amend the Employment Services Act by imposing a guarantor system. They should also be swayed into halting the crackdown on undocumented workers and of criminalizing them, as these are not the solutions to the runaway worker problem. A better option would be to introduce an amnesty system on undocumented migrants and address the causes why they runaway.

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