Foreign workers in Taiwan
Date Posted: 2/5/2006

CHUNGLI, Taiwan (AP) ? Sanukorn Chanchana works 70 hour weeks at a minimum?wage job in northern Taiwan, but when his contract expires in May, he intends to sign up for another three?year stint far from home and family.

Chanchana, a sturdy 48?year?old man from Chiang Rai in northern Thailand, is one of 300,000 foreign workers who have left behind grinding poverty ? and familiar surroundings ? for the privilege of earning US$484 a month before deductions ? in Taiwan?s booming economy.

The former rice farmer, who has worked here for eight years, makes it clear that working abroad means big sacrifices.

"Most of all, I miss my wife and my two children," he says. "It?s hard to be away from them. But I?m earning money that I send back home, so I?ve learned to live with their absence."

Chanchana and his counterparts from Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are part of a worldwide wave of migration of workers from poorer lands to richer ones.

In Taiwan, as in other developed economies, they provide a significant boost to domestic industry by working in jobs that locals shun ? or accepting wages locals would laugh at.

Chachana?s recent stint as textile factory machinist paid less than half the going rate for a Taiwanese.

But the money Taiwan?s foreign workers earn adds up quickly. Even without overtime, they send home more than US$1 billion a year ? cash that often makes the difference between subsistence and modest comfort for their families.

LIFE AS A FOREIGN WORKER IN TAIWAN IS A STRUGGLE

Still, life as a foreign worker in Taiwan is a struggle, marked by loneliness, unfamiliar food and customs, and worst of all, unscrupulous employers and job brokers, who sometimes reduce pay packets and benefits to pad their own pockets.

In Chungli, a gritty industrial town just west of the capital, Taipei, foreign workers from Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines gather at the Hope Worker?s Center, a Catholic?sponsored refuge. They discuss prospects for finding reasonable work in safe environments.

Many are temporarily unemployed after company bankruptcies or other problems with employers.

All hope to have new jobs in weeks.

Outside the center, Thai restaurants and overseas telephone exchanges dot the landscape, providing lifelines for the town?s sizable foreign worker community.

Last August, mostly Thai workers in Taiwan?s southern city of Kaohsiung rioted against poor living conditions, triggering the resignation of the head of the island?s labor department.

Analysts say the scandal set off by the workers? action was a major reason for the poor showing by President Chen Shui?bian?s Democratic Progressive Party in last month?s municipal elections.

Father Bruno Ciceri, an Italian Roman Catholic priest who has spent 20 years ministering to foreign workers in Asia, says the Taiwanese labor system is fraught with abuses due to the brokerage system?s inherent unfairness. The Taiwanese government has accepted the system as the best way of regulating workers? lives.

Brokers take a fixed amount from a worker?s monthly pay, set by Taiwanese law at US$47 to US$56, depending on how long the worker has been on the island.

In exchange, the broker helps the worker procure residence documents and file tax returns, and find alternative work if necessary.

However, Ciceri says, in many instances brokers take more than the allotted amount, and forego their obligations to workers.

"There are brokers who charge US$250 to US$313 during the first eight months of employment," he said. "There are brokers who charge worker US$63 for bedding when you can pick it up in the market for US$3.13. The system is quite unfair."

Ciceri says that the rules established by Taiwan?s Council of Labor Affairs provide adequate protection for foreign workers, but chides the council for alleged ineffectiveness.

"The CLA is supposed to be protecting the foreign workers, but in fact it is not," he said.

An official at the Foreign Workers Section of the council denied Ciceri?s claim.

"If there are incidents of exploitation, workers can come to us for help," said the official, who asked not to be named because she is not an official spokeswoman.

The council?s spokesman declined to comment.

Interviews with foreign workers in Taiwan paint a mostly favorable picture of employment conditions.

Chachana said he was "more or less" satisfied with his treatment at his last place of work in Taoyuan County, just west of Taipei.

"We slept on bunk beds, five or six people in a reasonably large room," he said. "With overtime I was making about US$625 a month, and after deductions for health care and broker?s fees and taxes I was able to send a little less than half of that home. It wasn?t bad at all."

Another foreign worker, 27?year?old Pham Thi Xim from Vietnam?s Ninh Binh province, said she was well?treated while working as a caretaker for an elderly woman in northern Taiwan.

"It was very hard work," she said. "But the money helps my family. I will stay as long as I can."

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE VOICES WE DON'T HEAR ABOUT IN THE NEW?

Victims are not inclined to speak to reporters or authorities about the horrors they are subjected to or the details of their abuse and exploitation. Their instinct is not to trust outsiders or even people they know by acquaintance because they trusted someone once to help them get a better job, help their families.....but instead they ended up in a foreign country and subjected to horrors beyond their imagination, beyond our imagination ... since I have been privileged and burdened with real stories from real victims during my trips to Taiwan, I have to do my part to share with others the horror that exists for these victims with the hope that one more person will join the fight against human trafficking.