LAGGING: Premier William Lai has urged IT companies to take advantage of tax breaks that would allow them to pay higher wages without eroding their bottom line

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 24, 2018
By: Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

The key to countering Chinese behemoths poaching skilled Taiwanese workers lies in Taiwanese employers’ attitude on curbing the brain drain, Premier William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, calling on the nation’s top-performing enterprises to make use of government policies to respond to the issue.

Lai made the remarks at a question-and-answer session at the Legislative Yuan with Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Julian Kuo (郭正亮), who said the government has failed to propose policies to prevent large Chinese companies from poaching skilled Taiwanese workers.

For example, Tsinghua Unigroup has reportedly wooed engineers from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) with a yearly salary of between NT$6 million and NT$7.5 million (US$205,691 and US$257,113), which is about five times what TSMC pays, Kuo said.

Low pay is the main reason behind the nation’s exodus of talent, especially in the high-tech industry, Kuo said.    [FULL  STORY]