As part-time or short-term jobs become more common, Taiwan is considering legislation to regulate non-conventional employment.

The News Lens
Date: 2017/09/07
By: Rachel McMahon

In Taiwan, as elsewhere across the globe, freelance and contingent work is on the rise

Photo Credit: Corbis/達志影像

as businesses shift their employment models away from the 9-to-5 jobs that have traditionally dominated labor markets. As of May 2016, according to survey data from the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), Taiwan had a total of 792,000 part-time, temporary, and dispatch workers – nearly seven times the number from a decade ago – accounting for just over 7% of Taiwan’s working population.

The growing popularity of part-time work has gone hand-in-hand with an increase in the use of dispatching services in which specialized agencies act as a bridge between client companies in search of part-time labor and personnel willing to work on a temporary basis. Dispatch workers hold employment contracts with their dispatching agency rather than the client company they perform services for. But the wide range of roles and responsibilities for dispatch workers, combined with their atypical employment status, make regulating their wages, benefits, and protections particularly challenging.    [FULL  STORY]