A working group to negotiate a labor agreement with India, delaying retirement for Taiwanese workers and hiring international students are just some of the measures the government is working on to ease the nation’s labor shortage, Minister of Labor Ho Pei-shan (何佩珊) said in an interview published yesterday.
Taiwan and India on Feb. 16 signed a memorandum of understanding in which they agreed to introduce not more than 1,000 Indian migrant workers during a trial period, Ho told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister paper of the Taipei Times).
The Ministry of Labor has invited Indian officials to visit Taiwan to hold the first Taiwan-India working group meeting to discuss details of the labor collaboration and facilitate the recruitment of Indian workers, Ho said.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
The labor shortage problem is not unique to Taiwan, with many countries experiencing the same problem after the COVID-19 pandemic, Ho said.
However, Taiwan’s labor participation rate for people aged 55 or older is low — about 15 percentage points behind that of South Korea and Japan, she said.
The ministry has enacted policies to provide more incentives for local companies to employ older people, she added.
The hospitality business, one of the service industries that have frequently complained about a labor shortage, has started complying with the policy, she said.
For instance, senior workers comprise about one-quarter of staff at The Place hotel chain’s Tainan branch, including some who are over 70, Ho said, adding that based on her personal observation, many restaurants that are doing well are often staffed with senior workers.
However, Ho cautioned that any policies regarding the service sector should be implemented with care, as they would affect young, middle-aged and older people or women seeking re-employment who comprise the majority of workers in the sector.
Language and culture are also factors to be considered, she added.
The government has heard the public’s demands and has also eased regulations to allow foreign students in Taiwan to work part-time, she said.
This policy would provide 13,000 more potential workers annually, but it is up to the companies to attract this group of workers, she said.
Ho also addressed questions about President William Lai’s (賴清德) statement that there is “zero possibility” of the government slashing labor pension payouts, as the average retiree receives a monthly pension of only NT$18,000.
Subsidizing the labor funds is a form of reform, she said.
Government subsidies for the funds over the past six years have reached NT$387 billion (US$12.12 million), which have been invested in the market and yielded profitable returns, she said.
For the first seven months of the year, the labor funds’ accumulated gains totaled NT$885.7 billion, representing a rate of return of 14.33 percent, she said.
Among the funds, the Labor Retirement Fund’s total value stood at NT$1.1 trillion and yielded a return of 15.37 percent, the minister said.
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