31,000, could create problems since undocumented workers have no protection when their rights are not respected and they have no health or labor insurance (see tables 7 and 8). Workers are being overworked and there is no protection for them. They are also in the position of getting hired illegally, most likely for a job that they are not qualified for, which may potentially harm their lives as well as drive wages down in Taiwanese labor market.
Workers run away for a number of reasons. First of all, when migrant workers come to Taiwan they have to pay a placement fee ranging from NT$70,000 to 110,000 (US$2121 to 3333), which is higher than anywhere else in Asia. 15 While Taiwan has become one of the most attractive destinations for migrant workers due to its relatively high salaries, the opportunity to work in Taiwan is relatively scarce for foreign applicants due to quota controls. Brokers are thus able to appropriate a significant share of “scarcity rent” in the process of recruiting and placing workers.
High placement fees come about as a result from a supply-demand imbalance in Taiwan's migrant labor market.
Due to high brokerage fees, Filipinos need to work for at least a year to get out of debt, another year to start to break even and earn income, followed by at least another year to make the overall experience profitable. Up until 2012, Taiwan had a law stating migrant workers can't change employers without going through another broker, which would mean the same brokerage fee would have to be paid again. As of 2012 this law has been changed but most workers are not aware of it according to my interviews with DHWs. Therefore, in order to reduce the risk of being fired and avoid an enormous amount of debt, workers refrain from speaking out if they encounter a problem with their employer and don’t dare change employers. If workers protest or argue about their working conditions, they are often at the risk of being repatriated and are still left with their brokerage fees. But since virtually all the DHWs are in Taiwan due to lack of work in the Philippines, they feel helpless. All of the runaway DHWs that I interviewed told me this is why they put up with their employers for as long as they did before they couldn’t take it anymore and fled.
15According to an interview with a manpower agency in the Philippines
‧
socially isolated and legally bonded position in host societies. Migrant workers haven’t been able to circulate in the labor market until 2011, whereas foreigners in the white- collar sector have always had that right. The government dictates that a migrant worker can work for only one particular employer during his or her stay in Taiwan. No transfer of employer is allowed except for the following three conditions:First, if the original employer goes bankrupt and cannot pay wages to the worker for two months; second, if the care recipient of a migrant worker dies or migrates to another country; third, if a worker can prove that he or she was physically abused by the original employer (Chao 1992).
Taiwan's government also places migrant workers in their employer’s custody as a way of externalizing management costs. Each employer is requested to deposit a sum equivalent to the migrant worker's two month salary as an “assurance bond” and to pay a monthly “employment stabilization fee,” which varies from NT$700 to 2,000 (US$23-60). The fee is designed to subsidize government expenses in managing migrant workers and retaining local workers. If a migrant worker runs away, his or her employer is still obligated to pay an “employment stabilization fee” every month until the worker is caught or the contract expires. Another more serious punishment to the employer is that the quota associated with the runaway worker is temporarily frozen, so that the employer is not able to hire a replacement during this period. In other words, the employer suffers not only the loss of labor power once provided by the runaway worker, but also the loss of a more precious commodity, the quota, and the capacity of replenishing migrant labor. These policy measures have organizational consequences on the practice of the brokerage market and daily labor control carried out by employers.
Taiwan’s government has been very active in allowing recruiting agencies hire migrant workers. The direct involvement of governments in the promotion of international migration is a major feature of the Asian system that distinguishes it from migration systems in North America or Western Europe. Taiwan’s government has played an active role channeling the import of migrant labor as a profitable commodity and there has been lack of regard towards the rights of workers. The Taiwanese government has been promoting migrant workers to come to Taiwan, but not active in ensuring that they have basic rights as well as providing incentives such
‧
number of workers to recruit. The quota refers to the proportion of the workers that a company can hire and that policy is adapted by Taiwan in order to protect the employment of its nationals. He said that the difficulty at MECO, however, is when foreign workers are told that a certain company has exceeded its quota because some local workers have decided to retire or resign from their jobs and the foreign workers are asked to leave Taiwan because the company has already violated the quota prohibition. The director said, however, that the foreign workers are not at fault in that situation and that as of now the Taiwanese government allow those workers to transfer to other employers when they are not the ones at fault. 16MECO does make a good point on the issue of quotas. However, there are currently up to 600 licensed brokers competing to do business with a limited number of employers possessing quotas. The figure doesn't include unlicensed companies or individuals, which some scholars say account for about 15% of the market. There are more brokerage services than employers want to buy (and so the prices to employers go down), while there are fewer brokerage services than workers want to buy (and so the prices to workers go up).
The reason why a broker is willing to pay the kickback is because he or she can still appropriate significant profits from placement fees charged to migrant workers through the process of “converting the job orders into money.” Playing the intermediate role in the migration chain, brokers “buy” job orders from employers at the costs of the “kickback”, and then sell these job orders to applicants in sending countries at the price of exorbitant placement fees, through the mediation of foreign agencies. Also, many Taiwanese brokers have bought out Filipino agencies to minimize transaction costs, an economizing strategy of internalizing market into firm hierarchy (Williamson 1981). Due to the fact that the Philippines government still outlaws foreign-own agencies, most Taiwanese brokers only purchased the rights of management while registered under the name of Filipino workers.
16Ibid
‧
workers placement fees, nor should service fees be deducted from workers’ salaries.Foreigners who work in the white-collar sector in Taiwan are allowed to work at organizations based on their qualifications and if those meet Taiwanese companies needs, they do not need to pay any fees in order to try out a job in Taiwan. White-collar workers are assessed based on their education and skills and it is up to the employer whether or not they want to take a risk with hiring a particular employee;
such should be the case for blue-collar workers as well.
There needs to be an intermediary for Taiwanese to go through for hiring Filipinos especially since there are language and cultural barriers to deal with.
Brokers can play that role, but they should only have the rights to charge Taiwanese for their services in finding them an appropriate foreign worker. This is a more ethical form of consulting and it eliminates the burden migrant workers have to bear when coming to Taiwan. White-collar foreign workers in Taiwan make at least 3 times minimum and usually 5-7 times the amount of money blue-collar ones do and don’t have to pay any brokerage fees. Because of this, the government has exacerbated the reason for Filipinos to run away and find illegal work.
In addition to placement fees, some Philippine agencies or Taiwanese brokers also extract profits from workers through mandatory purchases, such as hats or jackets with the company logo (so workers can be easily recognized while being picked up in the airport), books or tapes for Mandarin instruction, or nursing uniforms. Workers usually pay the down payment to their agencies in their home countries, and Taiwan's brokers collect their share through monthly deduction from workers' salaries. These practices undoubtedly violate the Taiwanese government regulation, according to which placement fees collected from workers should not exceed NT$7,000 ($US240).
Some brokers eve requested workers to sign a receipt before their departure to Taiwan, so as to disguise salary deductions as money the worker borrowed. While paying, workers are usually told by agencies or brokers that the job offers in Taiwan would be valid for three years and that they have the possibility of extending their contracts to nine years. Those who fail to extend their contract after one year rarely get refunds from the placement fees they paid (Cheng 2001).
Overall, the quota system only allows migrant workers to be numbers in a system that has too many loopholes and outside factors. The employment of migrant workers reduces costs for employers not only through their lower wages, but also
‧
through their powerlessness in the organization of labor process, associated with their foreigner status and lack of citizenship (Sassen 1988). Migrant domestic workers are marginalized by a series of political and legal regulations based on the principal of territorial sovereignty, as well as by their status of personal subordination to contract employers. In fact, as of 2008 Taiwan’s government has changed the law restricting workers to be hired directly by employers. However, it is not known amongst any of the interviewees and the government still holds employers responsible for monitoring the whereabouts of their foreign employees. Such policy has exacerbated distrust and surveillance in private households but offers no solution to the problem.
To improve the human rights of migrant workers as well as the quality of care for the wards, the host state should “de-marginalize” the position of migrant domestic workers. Migrant workers should be allowed to transfer employers on mutual consent, so employment relationships would be based on reciprocal exchanges rather than personal slavery. So far the Labor Standards Law in Taiwan has not yet covered the protection of domestic workers in this regard. As of 2011 the law has stated that workers can find their own employer but only after their contract is finished or if conditions mentioned previously mentioned occur. Such exclusion ignores the facts that private households have become a field of employment and management, and domestic workers are subject to the most intensive surveillance among all migrant workers. Quality care can only be achieved when the quality of life for care workers is a concern.
In Taiwan, the state determines how migrant workers are allocated and incorporated into specific sites in the relations of production and the organization of the labor process. Economic exploitation of migrant workers by private agencies is exacerbated by government regulations; employers are encouraged by the state to carry out personal control over migrants on a daily basis. Migrant workers are not eligible to apply for permanent residence or naturalized citizenship. Luckily though, if workers do get pregnant they will not be required to either leave Taiwan or have an abortion, as was required in past laws.
A quota system has been developed by the CLA with the aim of controlling the quantity of migrant workers and their distribution in selected occupations and industries. Based on investigations into an alleged labor shortage, the CLA determines the size of quotas, selects the industries or occupations that may enjoy quotas, and releases the quotas on an irregular basis. This quota system brings about an interesting
‧
corruption. The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) has uncovered several scandals where employers mobilized political networks to strive for quotas, or brokers paid off CLA officials to speed up the bureaucratic procedures of granting admission.17 Second, quotas have become profitable commodities in such a highly regulated market for migrant workers. Trade associations and a small group of employers who possess the privileges of distributing or monopolizing the limited number of quotas, can make extra profits by selling the quotas to other employers.However, there are no limits, that is, number wise, to the amount of white-collar foreign workers allowed in Taiwan. They are part of supply and demand just like any other worker in the world that is under a “free capitalist society”. If the demand of low cost labor is needed in Taiwan then it should be allowed to flow freely in the hands of the citizens and their entrepreneurships; not by the manipulation of broker agencies. By having the government step in and fix these issues and to promote training centers that effectively train both employers and employees from Taiwan and other Asian nations respectively, Taiwan can increase its human rights record as well as improve its international image; most importantly, many reasons that exacerbate the need for workers to run will be decreased.
Another problem for migrant workers in Taiwan is that the description of their jobs is very blurred. DHWs are hired under the pretense that they will be taking care of a family member, who in most cases an elderly person who is ill, or will act as a maid doing household chores such as cleaning and cooking. However, out of every runaway that I interviewed, all of them had to do all of those responsibilities and in a lot of cases, even more. Within half of that number, some had to also act as an English teacher for the kid(s) of the employer’s family as well as run any errands or side businesses that the family may have on top of taking care of an elderly family member. On average, this caused workers to be working from 7-8:00a.m. until 10:00p.m. while some even had to work well past midnight. To me, this sounded absurd so I decided to look into it more. This caused me to want to go to Manila, the capital of the Philippines in early 2011. I went to two recruitment sites that work with
17Several scandals in all of AIT’s annual human rights report
‧
what the brokers tell the people they hire and how they prepare the workers.Both of the places I went to were really difficult to find, almost as if they didn’t want anyone to find them. Upon arrival to both sites, I was stared at in bewilderment. As I explained who I was and why I was there, there was a deep sense of suspicion. My identification documents were checked over several times and I had to convince the staff members to let me interview them before they felt comfortable enough to let me stay despite them claiming that their organizations were legal. Both sites did divulge to me that I was the first Caucasian to have visited their centers though, so perhaps they were just not use to such an occurrence.
I told them that from my interviews I had conducted with Filipino DHWs that 9 out of 10 had complained about having to do heavy workloads as well as many assigned chores outside of their contracts. After hearing this, brokers at both agencies stared at me for a while and were hesitant to reveal information. As I explained to them that I wasn’t some undercover spy looking to bankrupt their company, they later gained confidence in me and began talking. At one of the brokerages, one person gave me a copy of the contract that a DHW had to sign as well as an outline of the actual responsibilities that DHW were going to have to do. The differences were astounding.
The broker gave me an “employer condition requirements outline” (see table 9) that listed all the responsibilities that this particular employer wanted from her DHW.
Those included primarily tasks for taking care of an elder person such as assisting with bathing and exercising, but also included teaching English to two kids in the family, food purchase (mistranslated as “marketing”), cleaning, as well as “other tasks”. After seeing the document, it became clear to me that the definition of a DHW was a super woman of some sorts and that her tasks were a conglomeration of any task that an employer asked for.
The outline was completely different than an actual full contract that states all responsibilities clearly (see tables 10-15). Within the contract, it is stated very clearly what the worker’s obligation are, which should only involve one major task such as taking care of a sick patient, and vacation time as well as salary is listed as well.
Unfortunately though, workers who have run away had employers who didn’t follow any of those stipulations; even workers who at least had a day off occasionally said that their tasks were always 2-3 times the amount stated in the contract.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Taiwanese employers revealed to me that their brokers said that DHWs were able to perform any household task that was assigned to them and that they had no idea that using the DHW for multiple tasks was considered illegal. Lack of regulation on brokers from the government is a major problem on this issue. The combination of brokers having too much freedom to manipulate the responsibilities of domestic workers as well as a lack of government responsibility to inform citizens on what is legally acceptable for DHWs has resulted in a lack of standard for a good portion of Taiwan’s foreign workforce. The government has not stepped in sufficiently to set standards and laws to adequately and fairly treat migrant workers. This has lead many employers to feel that they have absolute power over their employees and many cases of mistreatment have been reported, thus causing thousands of workers to flee in Taiwan every year. Each one of them has a unique story.
‧
DHWs and THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH TAIWANESE FAMILIES I will refer to Taiwan's society having Chinese characteristics based on its important in Chinese society even until this day.
Some scholars (Spence 1990) say that that hierarchy in class and the family peasants governed by landlords throughout most of the 20th century.
The remnants of this hierarchy haven’t faded much. During my stay in China
The remnants of this hierarchy haven’t faded much. During my stay in China