Starting today, the Council of Labor Affairs will stop accepting applications from manufacturers that wish to hire foreign workers for “three shift” production.
Council Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) promised last month that the council would put the interests of domestic workers ahead of those of foreign workers and would slash 30,000 jobs held by foreign workers.
The council has approved a revision of the Reviewing Standards and Employment Qualifications for Foreigners Engaging in the Jobs Specified in Items 8 to 11, Paragraph 1 to Article 46 of the Employment Service Act (就業服務法). Starting today, the council will not accept applications — called the Permit to Recruit Foreign Person(s) — by businesses seeking to hire foreign workers for manufacturing work or late shifts.
“Currently, the unemployment rate is high, so domestic workers are more willing to take late shifts,” said Chen I-min (陳益民), director-general of the Bureau of Employment and Vocational Training. “The hiring of foreign labor is supplementary and shouldn’t cause domestic workers to lose their jobs.”
Chen said the revision would reduce foreign labor by 30,000 people this year, as the council had promised earlier.
The council said it would work with the Ministry of Economic Affairs on programs to hire foreign labor if the economy improves in the future. It also said the revision to the Act would be reviewed at the end of this year.
Taiwan International Workers Association consultant Lorna Kung (龔尤倩) criticized the policy as being a “mythical tale” that would not solve the unemployment problem.
“From the way the government has handled the situation, we can see how it treats foreign laborers. They are let in when the economy is doing well and sent out when the economy is bad,” she said.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics on Thursday released the unemployment numbers for the month of January, which was 5.31 percent, meaning some 578,000 people were out of work across the nation.
Saying she understood that high unemployment was putting pressure on government officials, Kung said the plan would not work because the problem was rooted in industry structure.
“Foreign labor is cheaper [than domestic labor]. Factories that are in [financial] trouble would close down rather than hire domestic workers,” she said. “So it’s impossible that when 30,000 foreign workers leave they will be replaced by 30,000 domestic workers.”
In related news, the bureau loosened restrictions for its on-the-job training program, which was launched in December.
To encourage companies to provide training for their employees instead of laying them off during the production slowdown, the Plan of Promoting Employment Skill in the Short-term subsidizes on-the-job training for both workers and companies.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
RSS