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Aristotle
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1388
Location: Taiwan
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 Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 5:52 am Post subject: |
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Taiwan's toothless and widely ignored labor laws:
http://www.evta.gov.tw/lawevta/employee.html
Most employers are more scared of goverment scutiny than you would ever be.
Start writing things down and sending letters and faxes.
There is one more avenue you might try. Small claims court in Taiwan is done through the mail.
You can get a court reporting statement at the post office and have a Chinese friend fill it out.
Make sure to include any and all copies of information you have collected as evidence in the letter.
Once you have it filled out take to the post office have it notorized and put on the books, then send it to your employer.
Good luck,
A. |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 6:08 am Post subject: |
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| TaoyuanSteve wrote: |
| They offer visa advice and extensions. Their fee which includes classes, should you choose to attend, is only 4500nt. Go there before your visa expires and they may be able to get you an extension. |
It may be pointing out the obvious but this would be illegal if it was done for the purposes of working here. I didn�t get a sense from the OP that working illegally was really a viable option, but assuming that it is, then this would certainly appear to be a possible option.
| TaoyuanSteve wrote: |
| The law doesn't work here the way it does in the west. Even if Clark were to post some law here that said you didn't have a case, you may still have one. Chinese have a sort of fuzzy logic about these kinds of things. It's the same kind of logic that demands a car driver compensate the family of a scooter rider killed ina collision. Doesn't matter that the scooter driver was going the wrong way down a one-way street. |
The �law� is the same, it is just that things may be interpreted here somewhat differently than they are back home. The fact is though that the law is the law and is not actually open to much interpretation. Far too many of us don�t move past the counter staff who are often quite ignorantly dispensing their own interpretation of the laws. If you proceed past the counter staff and onto a supervisor, or even higher, then you will find that the law is in fact upheld more consistently. I think that this has more to do with the education system that raises people who can�t think independently coupled with poor training of sub-ordinate staff.
The analogy of the car vs. scooter driver is less true now than it was in the past, although I am speaking from a Taipei perspective and realize that other areas may be a bit behind in this regard. On the whole this �rule� of the larger vehicle always being in the wrong is no longer widely considered to be the case. It was a ridiculous rule and good riddance to it.
| TaoyuanSteve wrote: |
| Go to the Foreign affairs police and tell them what happened. They may help you get a severence pay. They may also tell you that you have no case. But either way, you'll find out more from them than you will here. |
Yes, as I have stated earlier up this thread, what you get here is opinion only, and speaking with the relevant authorities is the only way to get a definitive answer. Hopefully the OP now has a fuller understanding of the situation and will be able to use this information to ensure that he isn�t given the subordinate shuffle.
TS, why make mention of severance pay again. I do not know of a single foreign teacher that has ever received severance pay, and my understanding from the legislation is that we are not entitled to it anyway. I am sure that there are some teachers that have received a payment upon being fired, but from where I stand it seems to be far from the norm. Can you tell us more about the severance pay, who is entitled to it, and how one goes about securing this? This is an honest question as to the best of my knowledge it is a fallacy when referring to foreign teachers! |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 6:18 am Post subject: |
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This is not at all helpful.
The OP was quite rightly asking for the relevant article about severance pay that you stated he was entitled to in your earlier post.
The Employment Services Act (the legislation that you have linked to) makes no mention of severance pay, nor is it even the correct legislation covering the issuance of severance pay. The correct legislation is the Labor Services Act, to which I provided a number of links.
On behalf of the OP I ask again Aristotle. You waved the carrot of severance pay in front of this poor guy, so at least have the common decency to actually tell him where it is stated that he is entitled to this payment.
Providing a superfluous link to a totally unrelated piece of legislation is not providing a source to back up your claims. We should be helping people on this board, not misleading them. |
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Aristotle
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1388
Location: Taiwan
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 6:36 am Post subject: |
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Taiwan's labor laws are toothless and for the most part ignored in regard to workers rights. Show it to them and they will laugh in your face because foreigners have no rights on Taiwan.
The EMPLOYMENT SERVICES ACT
http://www.evta.gov.tw/lawevta/employee.html
Details the regulations for the employers when hiring a foreign worker.
These regulations are more widely enforced and carry hefty fines for violations arbitrarily enforced and levied on employers who fail to abide by the regulations.
That is where the severance pay comes from. Not what the employer should pay the employee for wrongful termination but whether it is cheaper to pay the employee severance pay or face paying an even larger fine and/or bribes when the employee reports any one of the numerous infractions they witnessed while employed there.
Now if your employer is a good law abiding Taiwanese business person who has followed all the laws and regulations in regard to employment of foreign nationals on Taiwan then of course they have no reason to pay severance as they have nothing to worry about.
In all my years on the island of Taiwan I have never met an honest Taiwanese business person!
Welcome to Taiwan.
A. |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 6:57 am Post subject: |
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| Aristotle wrote: |
| Taiwan's labor laws are toothless and for the most part ignored in regard to workers rights. Show it to them and they will laugh in your face because foreigners have no rights on Taiwan. |
For those who work illegally and advocate illegal work - yes!
For those who work within the law and pay taxes - no!
| Aristotle wrote: |
| Details the regulations for the employers when hiring a foreign worker. |
That's right.
| Aristotle wrote: |
| These regulations are more widely enforced and carry hefty fines for violations arbitrarily enforced and levied on employers who fail to abide by the regulations. |
That's wrong.
How can they be 'more widely enforced'? Each piece of legislation is a seperate entity that covers a different area of society. There is no ambiguity in such legislation and to try to suggest otherwise is laughable.
As you have pointed out, the Employment Services Act largely deals with the employment of workers.
The Labor Services Act in turn, deals with the management of employees once they have been hired.
You cannot get severance pay before you have been hired, hence the Employment Services Act has no application to severane pay entitlements. This is why there is no mention of severance pay within this piece of legislation.
Once you have started working then the Labor Services Act comes into play, and as severance pay can only apply to individuals who have actually been working then it is clear that this is the legislation that applies to severance pay. Providing direct support to this is the fact that Article 17 of the Labor Services Act covers the subject of severance pay.
I ask again:
Please point us to the article in the Employment Services Act that pertains to severance pay.
Please point us to the article in ANY legislation here in Taiwan that backs up your claim that the OP is entitled to severance pay.
You have suggested that the OP is entitled to severance pay and he has asked you to supply your source for this assertion. That is a fair question. You now have a moral obligation to either provide him with the specific information as to where it is stated that he has right to this money so that he can point this information out to his employer and get his severance pay; or accept that you were mistaken.
You are not really expecting him to approach his school or the authorities with all the babble about 'severance pay is all about employers protecting themselves' are you? If not then you need to actually help him by telling him specifically where this information is. |
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cogitocamel
Joined: 18 Dec 2004
Posts: 8
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:22 am Post subject: |
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Yes...................
I do not think that you guys need to debate the ewhole severance pay thing any longer. To me, what each one of you is saying is quite clear. Whereas Clark and Steve are more interested in means of action that are covered and backed up by the labour laws, Aristotle is speaking outside of this frame, and although he hasn't said it quite so plainly, his suggestion is equivalent to blackmail.
Now I cannot say I blame him, after all I'd be the first to do what he says if I thought I had enough reason to. The problem is that - as Clark has said - I'm not that sure I do. The situation is complicated. I would need to find out more about what I could actually accuse the school of. Here are the points that come to mind:
1-employing me without a work permit, whilst making me believe i'd get one.
2-dismissing me without any reason (which the contract specifies against).
3-dismissing me without warning (I was given 18 hours to pack up)
These are the only actual, objective reproaches I can think of. Personally, what hurts most is the fact that they are responsible for my unplanned and (relatively) expensive visa run to Bangkok, but I don't see them paying 6000 NTD for a plane ticket, do you?
I spoke to my boss yesterday evening. He said that even if they hadn't fired me, I would have had to make a visa run, because it takes more than four weeks to get a work permit. Is this true? I gave them my degree, health check, passport, photos... on February 15th. My visa runs out on March 11th. Was there no chance to get a work permit in this amount of time? The school says they never know. Sometimes the permits come through quick, sometimes it takes six weeks. This is their main argument right now, so I'd like to know if it's the truth or just bull5h1t...
I'm leaving for Bangkok tomorrow evening. I still don't know whether I'll be able to get a visa back here. But hey! wish me good luck guys 
Thanks to all of you for helping me!!! |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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Apologies for the discussion that is going on around this subject Cogitocamel. These sorts of exchanges between myself and Aristotle go way back. Sorry that your post has gotten caught up in the middle, but at least you should get some valuable information out of it all. It could be worse, your question could have gone unanswered.
| cogitocamel wrote: |
| 1-employing me without a work permit, whilst making me believe i'd get one. |
Although it may be possible to get the school on this one it is a technicality that may be lost in the system. Yes, you could argue this, but I am not so sure that you would receive a lot of support. Not because of any cover up, but just because this approach to employing foreigners has really become systematic. I seem to recall that when the CLA took over control of issuing the work permits that they OK'd the idea of foreign teachers working so long as the work permit application had been sent in. I can attest to the fact from personal experience that if you are caught teaching, provided that your employer has submitted the paperwork to the CLA and can prove that, then neither you nor the school will be punished. The authorities will however come back at a later date to confirm that the paperwork has been completed. This has been my experience.
| cogitocamel wrote: |
2-dismissing me without any reason (which the contract specifies against).
3-dismissing me without warning (I was given 18 hours to pack up) |
I am not sure that either of these will hold water as I don't see that the school has a case to answer on either of them. I don't think that the school was obliged to provide either of these and although it would have been proper of them to do under the circumstances, I don't think that people can be punished for being not nice.
If you seriously want to pursue the matter then I think that your best course of action is to pursue the question as to whether the offer and then revocation of work permits is an habitual problem for this company. It is for this reason that I asked in an earlier post whether or not there were other foreigners working there who had secured work permits through that employer. If not, and if you can turn up other foreigners who have been dismissed under the same circumstances and who are happy to back you up, then you may just have a legitimate complaint against this company.
While such action is unlikely to benefit you, there are some hefty fines for employinmg foreigners illegally, and if you push the right people you may be able to achieve a situation where the school gets fined for employing foreigners illegally, if indeed that is what they have been doing.
| cogitocamel wrote: |
| These are the only actual, objective reproaches I can think of. Personally, what hurts most is the fact that they are responsible for my unplanned and (relatively) expensive visa run to Bangkok, but I don't see them paying 6000 NTD for a plane ticket, do you? |
Not if they haven't done anything wrong.
| cogitocamel wrote: |
| He said that even if they hadn't fired me, I would have had to make a visa run, because it takes more than four weeks to get a work permit. Is this true? |
It's possible but not likely. When the MOE were handling things it did take four to six weeks for the paperwork to come through. Since the CLA took over last year, the approval period has been reduced to 7 to 10 days, two weeks at the most.
Is it possible that the school never actually made the application for you? The fact that the boss quoted a time frame that was true years ago but not any longer suggests that either he is just a liar, or that his experience with the process dates back to the time when the MOE were in charge. |
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Ki
Joined: 23 Jul 2004
Posts: 475
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 9:17 am Post subject: |
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I may have been an exception to the rule but it took about 5 weeks to get my ARC sorted out. There weren't any complications. It just took that long. I was in the precarious position of having over stayed my visitors visa by two weeks without having seen my passport for a month. But it all came through in the end. My employer didn't lie to me about it being processed.
If they had wanted to then it would have been possible. |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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Ki, out of curiosity, when did this happen?
Also, are you sure that the processing took this long, or was the delay due to the employer either not passing the application on straight away (whether they blamed on the authorities or came clean and told you that they hadn't passed it on) or possibly a delay in passing the completed work permit back to you.
I ask this as all the reports that I have gotten since the CLA took over have been that it is currently taking less than two weeks from the time the work permit application is sent, till the time that it is received back from them. |
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TaoyuanSteve
Joined: 05 Feb 2003
Posts: 1028
Location: Taoyuan
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 4:06 pm Post subject: |
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| My first application took about a month. Subsequent renewals have taken less time. The school may or may not have applied for the OP's ARC, as they claimed to have done. I think it's highly likely that they didn't. |
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Aristotle
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Posts: 1388
Location: Taiwan
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 3:43 am Post subject: |
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The fact that your employer never applied for your ARC and held your passport until your visa was up is common practice for many schools on Taiwan from the University level to Kindergartens.
There are numerous laws that are supposed to protect you from this sort of thing but on Taiwan both the government and local businesses ignore this fact particularly when foreign nationals are involved.
Issues you may want to examine would be National Health Insurance and Tax withholdings. Both of these issues are mandated by departments whose primary mandate is getting paid by your employer and not the subjugation of foreign nationals.
Good luck,
A. |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 12:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Aristotle wrote: |
| The fact that your employer never applied for your ARC and held your passport until your visa was up is common practice for many schools on Taiwan from the University level to Kindergartens. |
This is not a common practice but it does happen. Schools who are not licenced to employ foreign teachers may do this either intentionally or unintentionally. This is just one reason why teachers who are new arrivals in Taiwan are best served to start out at one of the big chain schools. With some degree of certainty you can be sure that the paper work will be processed there and you can branch out in the following years once you find a reputable school that pays more.
| Aristotle wrote: |
| There are numerous laws that are supposed to protect you from this sort of thing but on Taiwan both the government and local businesses ignore this fact particularly when foreign nationals are involved. |
Yes there are laws against employers who are not licenced to do so, employing foreigners illegally. The teacher would have to notify the authorities of this fact though as the authorities may not automatically know what is going on. If make a formal complaint then it will be investigated. If you don't then I guess that the problem will continue. |
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Ki
Joined: 23 Jul 2004
Posts: 475
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| Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 8:32 am Post subject: |
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Clark-
This happened just last month. It also included Chinese new year which I didn't take into account. One can never be sure that the delays in processing are in fact due to the employer. They are not a small school. They assured me that it would be processed immediatly. After about three weeks I began to ask twice a week if it they had got it back yet. Maybe there was a break down in comunications and it didn't get handed to the right person at my school. But that was to get the whole lot done. The whole ARC process confusese me. A friend of mine processed his at the same time as me and got his back two weeks earlier. Go figure. |
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clark.w.griswald
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 2056
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| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 2:20 am Post subject: |
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| Ki wrote: |
| I may have been an exception to the rule but it took about 5 weeks to get my ARC sorted out. There weren't any complications. It just took that long. I was in the precarious position of having over stayed my visitors visa by two weeks without having seen my passport for a month. But it all came through in the end. My employer didn't lie to me about it being processed. |
| Ki wrote: |
| This happened just last month. It also included Chinese new year which I didn't take into account. One can never be sure that the delays in processing are in fact due to the employer. They are not a small school. They assured me that it would be processed immediatly. After about three weeks I began to ask twice a week if it they had got it back yet. Maybe there was a break down in comunications and it didn't get handed to the right person at my school. But that was to get the whole lot done. The whole ARC process confusese me. A friend of mine processed his at the same time as me and got his back two weeks earlier. Go figure. |
When you say ARC I am assuming that you are referring to the work permit. Or are you referring to whole process from work permit through resident visa through to ARC. It is pretty much a three step process, so does the five week period that you refer to above apply to the whole three steps or just one of them.
The CLA only deals with the work permit, and it was this part of the process that I was referring to earlier, as it is really the only part of the process that is variable. It is also the only part of the process that the school generally need deal with. You hand them a copy of your degre and passport, they add documents to this, and then send the whole package in. At this time it usually takes about 7 to 10 days for the CLA to process things and send the documents back to the school. Delays could occur of course, and this may have been what happened in your case.
You mention that the approval period included Chinese New Year which means that a week is lost for that alone, bringing down the total to four weeks. I am not so confident that schools appreciate how important the work permit process is to teachers. Without a work permit we cannot stay here, and this would be a pretty life altering event for anyone who was faced with this situation. Too many schools put off the submitting of our paper work to the last minute thereby causing some anxiety on our end as the expiry date of our visas approaches.
I often state that it generally takes 7 to 10 days for the CLA to process the work permit. It may seem that Ki's took longer. I would be interested to know if indeed the work permit did take four weeks to process. |
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Ki
Joined: 23 Jul 2004
Posts: 475
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| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 5:19 am Post subject: |
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| Sorry for the confusion. I guess I'm talking about all three steps. The school sorted it all out for me. Hence it taking such a long time, I guess. Or is there something else I should be doing? |
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