The labor agency’s yearly assessment of migrant worker broker firms is underway, but a recent protest has renewed sentiments that the brokerage system is unethical by design.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/04/27
By: Nick Aspinwall
Credit: Lennon Ying-Dah Wong / STP
On Monday, Taiwan’s Ministry of Labor (MoL) began its annual evaluation of the country’s migrant worker brokerage firms. In the wake of its rollout, activists and workers have raised questions about the efficacy of the assessment.
These concerns were punctuated by a Monday night protest by hundreds of Vietnamese workers in New Taipei City, who stood outside into the early morning hours to demand that their broker stop charging exorbitant fees for basic services. This broker was graded in the MoL’s last assessment as being highly reputable.
The MoL pledges to evaluate Taiwan’s 1,471 brokerage firms, which manage and provide services to the bulk of Taiwan’s approximately 600,000 migrant workers, on their performance in providing client services, responding to worker complaints and managing “runaway” worker cases. Penalties are levied by the MoL for recorded violations of the Employment Service Act (就業服務法). [FULL STORY]