A few days ago, I received a phone call from a caregiver. She sounded frustrated and angry. She kept on asking me about her rights because her employer was refusing to give her a day off — she hadn’t had a day off in more than two years.
“Why they can treat me like this? I am not a slave!” she said.
Daisy is another caregiver. She enjoys a day off only once a month, but wants to take a regular day off every week. After she requested this of her employer, the lovely woman suddenly became cool and detached. She ignored not only her request but also her very presence.
This kind of conversation is a frequent part of my work, and that makes me sad and angry.
I won’t forget the sadness of Nancy, a caregiver in Taipei County. She showed me a picture of her three kids. Her oldest son died 20 years old while she was here. She was not allowed to attend his funeral. She was forced to abandon her family life, the most precious part of Philippine culture. I looked at her face and felt the pain and sadness — and persistence.
Tens of millions of people around the world are employed as domestic workers. The great majority of them are women. The common feature of their jobs is often harsh working conditions with long working hours. Most caregivers are live-in employees, which makes it more difficult to divide living space and work space: Because work is performed in private residences, the division is rendered invisible.
Caregiving is thought of as assistance that women provide inside someone else’s home rather than as a proper job with all the attendant rights. Caregivers are paid poorly, have low status and work in an environment in which two basic sets of rights clash: the worker’s rights and the employer’s rights in maintaining the family’s privacy.
Domestic work is excluded from some labor laws, and exploitation of workers follows.
In 2003, many incidents of abused migrants were reported, but the most explosive was of the death of writer and national policy adviser Liu Hsia (劉俠), an advocate for the disabled.
On Feb. 8, 2003, she died after being attacked by her Indonesian caregiver, who suffered from convulsion disorder, a psychological affliction caused by emotional stress, which made her unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy.
The incident shocked the public. Some employers worried that they had ticking bombs working in their homes. Others argued that violations of the rights of household workers, especially withdrawing days off and the pressure and isolation of work, had turned both the carers and the cared into victims.
Last year a Vietnamese worker killed her employer and jumped to her death after not receiving her salary for two years.
Responsibility for this situation can be attributed to Taiwan’s labor policy, which is like a front for slavery.
In response to NGO pressure, the government revised regulations on Jan. 13, 2004, to allow NGOs to establish non-profit employment service agencies. But it continues to ignore the need for new laws and to insist that it is “studying” this issue.
Today is International Migrants’ Day, and it’s a shame that household workers here still do not have any real protection. We must bring attention to the rights of household workers.
Without such efforts, most domestic workers will never be able to claim days off, equal pay, labor insurance and so on.
There are more than 370,000 migrant workers in Taiwan, of whom 165,000 are household workers. We know that social change takes time and effort, but we would ask that more people pay attention to the plight of the most marginalized workers.
Lorna Kung is general secretary of the Scalabrini International Migration Network-Taiwan and a consultant to the Taiwan International Workers’ Association.
Would China attack Taiwan during the American lame duck period? For months, there have been worries that Beijing would seek to take advantage of an American president slowed by age and a potentially chaotic transition to make a move on Taiwan. In the wake of an American election that ended without drama, that far-fetched scenario will likely prove purely hypothetical. But there is a crisis brewing elsewhere in Asia — one with which US president-elect Donald Trump may have to deal during his first days in office. Tensions between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea have been at
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hypersonic missile carried a simple message to the West over Ukraine: Back off, and if you do not, Russia reserves the right to hit US and British military facilities. Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik,” or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on Thursday in what Putin said was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with US and British missiles. In a special statement from the Kremlin just after 8pm in Moscow that day, the Russian president said the war was escalating toward a global conflict, although he avoided any nuclear
US President-elect Donald Trump has been declaring his personnel picks for his incoming Cabinet. Many are staunchly opposed to China. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Trump’s nomination to be his next secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, said that since 2000, China has had a long-term plan to destroy the US. US Representative Mike Waltz, nominated by Trump to be national security adviser, has stated that the US is engaged in a cold war with China, and has criticized Canada as being weak on Beijing. Even more vocal and unequivocal than these two Cabinet picks is Trump’s nomination for
An article written by Uber Eats Taiwan general manager Chai Lee (李佳穎) published in the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) on Tuesday said that Uber Eats promises to engage in negotiations to create a “win-win” situation. The article asserted that Uber Eats’ acquisition of Foodpanda would bring about better results for Taiwan. The National Delivery Industrial Union (NDIU), a trade union for food couriers in Taiwan, would like to express its doubts about and dissatisfaction with Lee’s article — if Uber Eats truly has a clear plan, why has this so-called plan not been presented at relevant