• Last updated:2021-10-18

Targeting on today’s (Oct. 17th) 5 petitions about abolishing current agent system and forced nation-to-nation employment for US Department of State listing Taiwan as the observed nation for people smuggling, the Council makes the following statements. 

一、About abolishing private agent system and forced nation-to-nation employment, the Council expresses that employers may select any one from self proceeding, authorization, or direct employment for introducing foreign workers, and will not interfere in the ways of introduction and management. Moreover, the Council is planning to simplify the direct employment procedure and establish the ‘single-window’ service to speed up documentary verification and consulting to protect foreign employees’ working rights. 

二、About free employer transferring, the Council states that the Management and Approval Regulations for the Employment of Foreign Nationals was revised on Jan. 1st, 2006 to allow the foreigner employees with mutual agreement between labor and employer to transfer to new employer. Those with special conditions or threats to personal safety may not be in suitable physical and mental status to work in the similar environments, and thus will be permitted to lift limitations on working types. Foreign workers with reasons outside their control, and unable to smoothly transfer to a suitable new employer within 3 limit times, will be permitted another 3 times by the employment service institutes they select. 

三、About abolishing the maximum term of accumulated 6 years, the Council reveals that the foreign worker system is the substitute way to compensate for insufficient domestic labor forces, and shall be operated under the prerequisites to protect working rights of domestic citizens, prevent alternative immigrations, and avoid social problems and impeding national economic development and industrial upgrading. Whether to lift the limitation on maximum working term, shall be comprehensively considered along with the immigration policy of Taiwan. 

四、About organizing labor unions and participating in union leader selection for foreign employees, the Council considers that foreign laborers qualified with membership as stipulated by the Labor Union Act may participate in the union operation as a member, but are not allowed to be selected as board member and supervising member. For the petition of consolidation rights, the Labor Union Act is under revision to lift limitations and controls about organizing unions, and to facilitate foreign laborers having equal consolidation rights as domestic laborers. 

五、About putting foreign labors in families under legal protections, the Council believes that foreign employees in families shall have their working rights emphasized, and invites specialists, social welfare groups, and representatives from relevant industries in meetings to reach the consensus that family workers have ‘individual’ and ‘multiple’ characters, unsuitably put under one unified law; whether consequent monitoring and inspections can resolve the current problems is doubtful For the feasibility evaluation to incorporate family workers into the Employment Standards Act, the Council will invite specialists, labor and social welfare groups, and representatives from relevant industries to further discuss and make a comprehensive evaluation. 

About foreign laborers being forced to work and leave personal certificates, the Council states that employers acting forcedly or in other such ways to require foreign labors to work, will have employment permits abolished along with transferring their employees, and be charged with ‘enslaving others’ as described in Article 296 of the Criminal Law. The over charging of processing fees of the agent, in contravention of Subparagraph 5 of Article 40 of Employment Service Act, and see the agent punished with fines, 10 to 20 times the illegal profits over t

• Source:Workforce Development Agency
• Publication Date:2006-10-17
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