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Taiwan |
Taiwan |
abuses foreign workers for years |
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★ CNN, 2025-7-13:
Taiwan operates the world's second-largest distant-water fishing fleet. Since 2020, the US Department of Labor has listed Taiwan's distant-water fishing industry as showing signs of forced labor, highlighting issues such as deceptive recruitment, withheld wages, physical violence and extreme working hours. Taiwan's distant-water fishing industry depends on more than 20,000 Indonesian and Filipino workers, but political will to protect their rights is lacking. “Even though the US has labeled Taiwan's fishing industry since 2020, the government responded with rhetoric but very little was changed”. Even basic safety measures were ignored, with some told not to wear life jackets because they “got in the way” of their work. Taiwan's Fisheries Agency said it has introduced reforms since 2022; But activists criticized the measures as cosmetic, saying they were aimed at improving Taiwan's image rather than addressing the root causes of forced labor.
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al jazeera , 2025-7-8: The number of unaccounted-for migrants on the island has doubled in the last four years, reaching 90,000 this January, according to the Ministry of Labor. Many undocumented workers can actually earn more without a broker, “but then you lose all social protections and health insurance.
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RestOfWorld.org , 2025-6-4 (restofworld.org/2025/filipino-workers-taiwan-chip-industry/):Taiwan's chip plants run on migrant workers. Job brokers run their lives. In Taiwan's AI-fueled chip boom, brokers control everything from paychecks to dorm beds, leaving workers feeling trapped and exploited.
Filipino workers in Taiwan's booming semiconductor industry face long hours, low pay, and second-class treatment.
They perform more difficult and riskier work.
For semiconductor companies, the environment is often military-style, Twelve-hour shifts are the norm, but 16-hour days are not unusual. They said that at some factories they are punished for small mistakes. One worker said she was bullied for months and forced to resign after she complained. Another one said most days, she would sit in her room and cry.
★ RestOfWorld.org , 2025-5-28: brokers use misinformation to manipulate their clients, preying on their limited knowledge of Taiwan’s labor regulations. Around seven out of 10 migrants seeking the shelter's help have trouble with their broker. They're then stuffed into dormitories owned by broker agencies, with more than 10 people in a small room sometimes, often with strict curfews; , many Filipinos said they lose around a fifth of their salary to brokers. Taiwan's undocumented labor force has nearly doubled since 2021, reaching a record high... It is not clear how many of them work in the tech sector.
★ 2024
Trafficking in Persons Report: Taiwan (state.gov/reports/2024-trafficking-in-persons-report/taiwan/ ) : Traffickers subject foreign men and women to forced labor and sex trafficking in Taiwan, and they subject local men and women to forced labor and local women and children to sex trafficking. Taiwan traffickers increasingly use the internet, smartphone applications, livestreaming, and other online technologies to conduct recruitment activities, often targeting child victims, and to mask their identities from law enforcement. Taiwan traffickers also exploit persons with disabilities in sex trafficking. Traffickers subject these workers to punishment for poor performance and disobedience, including, but not limited to, physical abuse, wage-docking, and debt-bondage, and may “resell” those who cannot meet sales quotas or repay recruitment debts to other criminal networks – for forced labor in similar fraud schemes, domestic servitude, or sex trafficking. Traffickers lure women from the PRC and Southeast Asian countries to Taiwan through fraudulent marriages and deceptive employment offers for purposes of sex trafficking. Foreign brokers often require migrant workers to pay exorbitantly high recruitment fees and deposits, As a result, some foreign workers incur substantial debts, which brokers or employers use as tools of coercion to force workers into debt bondage. Taiwan’s labor brokers receive substantial kick-backs from foreign recruiters, and observers allege that at times brokers use migrant workers as money mules to move cash to Taiwan-based brokers; Domestic workers and home caregivers are also especially vulnerable to exploitation, Some traffickers use Indonesian-owned stores in Taiwan as illegal remittance channels, confining Indonesian workers and subjecting them to sex trafficking. Traffickers reportedly take advantage of relaxed visa requirements under Taiwan's “New Southbound Policy” to lure Southeast Asian students and tourists to Taiwan and subject them to forced labor and sex trafficking. According to NGOs, a large number of for-profit universities in Taiwan aggressively recruit foreign students and subsequently place them into exploitative labor conditions under the pretense of educational opportunities. These students are often unaware of the work component prior to arrival.fishermen working on Taiwan-owned and -flagged and Taiwan- owned, foreign-flagged fishing vessels have experienced non- or under-payment of wages, long working hours, physical abuse, lack of food or medical care, denial of sleep, substandard safety equipment, and poor living conditions while indebted to complex, multinational brokerage networks through the continued imposition of recruitment fees and deposits. Migrant fishermen have reported senior crewmembers employ such coercive tactics as threats of physical violence, beatings, withholding of food and water, retention of identity documents, wage deductions, and non-contractual compulsory sharing of vessel operational costs to retain their labor. These abuses are particularly prevalent in Taiwan's DWF .
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United daily (, 2025-2-22: It has become the norm for foreign caregivers not to abide by their working contracts or/and to "avoid the severe ill patients or the disability".
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The Indian Express, 2025-2-1: Taipei has expressed a preference to hire these workers from India's northeastern states, citing cultural similarities and easy assimilation. Taiwan will deploy Indian blue-collar workers in sectors such as manufacturing, agriculture and construction amid labour shortages created by an ageing population and lower birth rates. indianexpress.com/article/india/taiwan-to-take-in-1000-indian-workers-recruitment-talks-on-with-northeastern-states-9806702/
★ GreenPeace, 2024-9-6: The U.S. Department of Labor's latest “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor”once again shows that the majority of migrant workers on Taiwan's distant water fishing vessels are experiencing indicators of forced labor. workers face hunger and dehydration, live in degrading and unhygienic conditions, are subjected to physical violence and verbal abuse, are prevented from leaving the vessel or ending their contracts, and are frequently not paid their promised wages or have food and lodging fees illegally deducted from their wages.” It also notes that the majority of fishers have been deceived by recruitment organizations with false information about wages and contracts, and have been forced to pay recruitment fees, incur debt, face confiscation of their identity documents, and work in poor conditions for 18 to 22 hours a day。Since 2020, when fish from Taiwan was first included in this list, all the actions taken by the Taiwanese Fisheries Agency have been for getting off the list instead of eliminating forced labor. The government’s passive attitude towards combating human trafficking and ending modern-day slavery and focus on maximizing the profits of the fishing industry, and its disregard for the dignity of the fisher’s labor and basic human rights, deserves to be condemned by international society and should be severely sanctioned. greenpeace.org/usa/news/us-department-of-labor-fish-from-taiwan-is-caught-with-forced-labor/
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