The most recent and worrying example concerns draft bills submitted by KMT lawmakers to revise the "Statute on the Management of Free Port Zones" to "delink" the wages of foreign migrant labor from the monthly basic wage of NT$17,280 mandated under the Labor Standards Act and to introduce a similar clause is included in the draft "Special Statute for Taoyuan Airport."
Such self-interested call by short-sighted business leaders are hardly novel. For example, business associations pressed the Democratic Progressive Party-led government to delink foreign labor wages from the basic wage beginning in the Economic Development Advisory Conference held in August 2001.
Spurred by objections by labor groups, then Council for Labor Affairs chairwoman and current Kaohsiung City Mayor Chen Chu opposed business proposals to delink compensation for foreign workers from the then basic wage of NT$15,840 both for human rights considerations and because the DPP government aimed to promote high-value added manufacturing and compete with advanced economies.
Besides aiming to secure extra-exploitative profits for selected multinational and Taiwan firms, the legislation of such "one country, multiple system" labor regulations would undermine labor conditions for all workers and take Taiwan's industry and economic development in the opposite direction from which it needs.
Bad for rights and economy
Instead of upgrading toward higher innovation, productivity and quality, delinking foreign labor wages from the basic wage and thereby putting downward pressure on domestic wages will reinforce the backward obsession with "cost down" business strategies which have obstructed the upgrading of Taiwan's industry and economy and also impeded the expansion of our domestic consumer market.
The question of human rights is also a major concern since allowing compensation of foreign labor to fall below national standards as represented by the basic wage would violate convents of the International Labor Office and invite censure from the ILO and global labor and human rights activists for "superexploitation" and blatant violations of human rights.
Moreover, we can anticipate the establishment of "special zones" for "one country, multiple systems" labor rules will become a precedent for moves to try to attract "low-wage" operations of Taiwan firms back from China through schemes such as setting up special zones which "delink" labor conditions from the rest of Taiwan and even allow the importation of PRC labor into such zones.
In sum, such delinking would benefit only a handful of backward looking business enterprises and would inflict heavy costs on Taiwan society and all of our people.
To her credit, CLA chairwoman-designate Wang Ju-hsuan openly opposed the call for "delinking" and correctly noted that the linkage provides a "minimum guarantee" for the rights of Taiwan's over 300,000 foreign laborers and warned that abolishing the linkage would cause innumerable problems with management of foreign labor as victims of "de-linking" will naturally try to find better paid employment.
After initial discussion on these bills this week in the Legislature, some KMT lawmakers want to directly revise the LSL itself and make delinking general to all of Taiwan.
Such a action would inflict an even greater and direct blow against the human rights of foreign migrant workers, the working conditions of all wage and salaried employees in Taiwan and the long-term prospects for Taiwan's industrial upgrading, social order and economic prosperity and Taiwan's international reputation as a democratic society.
As the editorial points out, the obsessing with reducing cost by lowering wages is a technological dead end -- there are no gains to labor productivity, which is the real driver of rising living standards. In addition to the bass-ackwards economic policy, the political danger of the FTZs should be clear: the KMT is attempting to refashion the FTZs into funnels for pushing Chinese labor into Taiwan.
For more insight into the FTZs, see this discussion with urban planning prof Dr. Thomas Liou.
[Taiwan]
6 comments:
I see very omnious skies in labor terms. Pair this issue with exteding the retirement age to 65 -so that workers cannot be forced to retire before that- and we have a not so nice view: "so that we do not have to rely on all those troublesome southasian workers"- manipulating all those 40 somethings who were left out in the cold after the factory owners absconded and ran with the money to China. Now the bosses are coming back for a second round.
Horrible way they treat local laborers, inhumane tretment for foreign labor, dunno wher ethis is headed to.
Michael, be sure to link to a Google cache of that Taiwan News editorial if you want people to be able to read it for more than a week.
Tim Maddog
"then Council for Labor Affairs chairwoman and current Kaohsiung City Mayor Chen Chu opposed business proposals to delink compensation for foreign workers..."
Funny, isn't she resigned from the Council for Labor Affairs due to the Thai labor scandal. I love how today pro-green can only padding themselves with their own lies, wait, I mean opinions.
Are they serious? Surely, however crazed the Taiwanese electorate may be, there are no votes in saying, "let's bring in a horde of Chinese labourers to take your jobs for half the money." I wonder if a Machiavellian green shouldn't be encouraging this proposal...
arty, i can't even understand the english of your comment. what are you saying?
stepping down when there's a scandal on your watch is called avoiding conflicts of interest. it's the same reason that chen shuibian or else chang jun-hsiung should have told chiu yiren and james huang to immediately step down once the $30 million was lost. even if they aren't involved, they need to step away and allow a third party to investigate do the clean up. chen shuibian is a dumbass for not making this happen. to the DPP's credit, everyone is together on saying this has been a complete mess.
the point of stepping down is so that in the case that you are involved with the scandal there is no appearance that you are able to manipulate the following investigation of the scandal. this doesn't mean that chen ju was actually involved in the scandal itself, which was shown in the following investigations.
arty, your comments are consistently hard to understand, illogical, and blindly pro-Blue, which is really funny because you accuse others of being blindly pro-Green.
arty, i can't even understand the english of your comment. what are you saying?
That's your problem not mine. However, it's clear that you do understand what I am saying considering your responses are three paragraphs long. Btw, my English could be horrid. However, I am barely smart enough to have native speakers to check and re-check for all my publications.
arty, your comments are consistently hard to understand, illogical, and blindly pro-Blue, which is really funny because you accuse others of being blindly pro-Green.
Sorry, I think the only common I have ever made about my political stands are: 1. I am an American (no dual citizenship, no Taiwan passport, and no Taiwan registor). Do you have dual citizenships? 2. I am a liberal-democrat who I think understand the different between democracy and Populism. I hate when people preaching democracy and don't even know what it is. 3. In my mind American interests trump almost anything except my liberal-democrat principles i.e. a democracy that respects individual rights.
The funny thing is that my Chinese friends think I am very anti-China. My parents think I am out of the line when I mentioned that Ma's performance as an executor was very poor, and how he has never passed a bar exam. So I guess I am doing a good job as a pro-blue supporter.
As for the new DPP scandal, I have a feeling that DPP is going to dissolve over this plus the current in-fighting. I just don't see how could DPP survive when the power of the party is controlled by bunches greedy (corruption charges), sexist (no single woman could possible be the head of DPP), and racist (Taiwanese or Chinese) old farts.
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