A Better Tomorrow? --Redefining Labor's Status

On May Day this year, over 20,000public- and private-sector employees braved heavy rain to demonstrate for six major demands. These included calls for an end to unemployment, political corruption and high college tuition fees, and for public funding for election campaigns. This rally, described as the biggest in the history of Taiwan's labor movement and the one with the most coherent program, is over. But just what is the situation today of the greatest unsung heroes of Taiwan's economic miracle, its workers? And what new challenges face the island's labor policy?

Case One: Mr. Wang. On graduating from university, Wang went to work in the laboratory at a teaching hospital. Six years later, he decided to leave for another job. But the hospital only gave severance pay after seven years' employment, so he went away empty-handed. He went to work at another large hospital, but conditions there are even less generous: employees are only entitled to retirement payments after 25 years. Eight years have gone by since Wang moved there, and once again he is getting itchy feet. But he cannot help hesitating: Wouldn't it be better to stick it out where he is? If he moves again, he will once more have to start working for his retirement payment entitlement from scratch. How many more times can he afford to throw away six or eight years of his life?

Case Two: Mr. Lu. A trade union official at a large Taiwanese-owned textile manufacturing company, Lu is also the workers' representative on the committee which monitors payments into the company's retirement fund, and is well versed in the relevant statutory regulations. Of the more than 6000 workers in the company's six factories, over 300 are now eligible to retire with a lump-sum payment, which means the retirement fund needs to contain at least NT$400 million. But the company's retirement fund account at the Central Trust of China, into which Lu's employer makes monthly payments under the Labor Standards Law, only contains a paltry NT$40-50 million. "Where are their payments to come from?" asks Lu.

What alarms Lu even more is the recent revelation that the company has applied to have the land on which the factory stands rezoned as a combined commercial and industrial area. What will the next step be? Will closure of the plant be inevitable? Lu, who bought a house right alongside the factory, and whose only prayer is that he can carry on working there until he retires, is now asking himself whether, like other workers faced with redundancy, he will have to take to the streets or lie down on railway tracks in protest.

Countless examples reveal the negligent treatment to which employed people in the ROC are exposed, and how badly informed and vulnerable they are. Numbering six to seven million, they form the largest social group in Taiwan. As they toil away at their jobs, shouldn't they also be thinking about who exactly is looking after their interests?

Changing labor relations

The quality of the Taiwanese workforce has long placed it among the world's leaders in terms of competitiveness. Unlike South Korea, where the powerful labor movement engages in yearly spring and autumn wage campaigns, Taiwan's workers are regarded as hardworking and docile, and maintaining "harmonious industrial relations" has long been the highest guiding principle of ROC labor policy.

Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) chairman Chan Huo-sheng points out two big differences between employed people in Taiwan and in other countries: "Over the past several decades, small and medium-sized companies have been the mainstay of Taiwan's economy. The workers in such companies are either people from the surrounding area, or else friends and relatives of the owners, so employee-management relations have always been very flexible. This differs from countries with an industrial structure built mainly around large companies, where workers and management are divided into clearly separate camps, and the relationship between them is basically antagonistic."

Furthermore, in the past it was easy to start a business with little capital, and both blue and white collar workers would aim to set up on their own once they had saved some money. "No-one is content to remain a lowly member of the working classes-everyone wants to better themselves. In other words, today's employee may become tomorrow's boss, so naturally there's no working-class consciousness to speak of," says Chan Huo-sheng.

However, the rapid transformation in Taiwan's labor market is now presenting unprecedented challenges to the factors behind this impression of industrial harmony. The biggest factor for change is industrial restructuring.

High-tech: blessing or curse?

"To be honest, the success of Taiwan's industrial restructuring and the rapid rise of high technology are great for the country, but for working people they may be bad news rather than good," says Hsin Ping-lung, an associate research fellow at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research who specializes in labor economics.

In the many semiconductor fabrication plants in the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, the dust-free "clean-room" production facilities are all fully automated. Despite their annual turnover of NT$20-30 billion, they employ under 3000 people.

"High-tech industries are built on specialized technology and huge capital investments. Barriers to entry are high, so not many people can get a slice of the cake. It's not at all like the traditional labor-intensive industries, where everyone could get a piece of the action." Hence all those workers who were let go when the shoe factories, garment factories and lamp factories closed down find no openings here.

Hsin Ping-lung cites the views of competitiveness guru Micheal Porter, who visited the ROC last year. Porter advocates upgrading existing industries, as Italy has done with its shoe industry. "They used to make cheap shoes; now they make high-grade shoes. With this approach workers can still learn the new technology. But a leap from cheap shoes to microelectronics means that large numbers of workers will be out of the game for good."

The new industries are capital-intensive and technology-intensive. Although it is not impossible for someone to start up in business from scratch, it is much harder than in the past. But even someone opening an electrical goods shop, a beauty salon or a grocery will find themselves competing against chain stores owned by large conglomerates.

"The dream of being the boss is no longer accessible to all," says Kuo Kuo-wen, general secretary of the Taiwan Labour Front. "Employees will start to realize that they may be working for someone else all their lives. This will arouse their class consciousness as working people, and the basically antagonistic nature of the relationship between workers and management will become more and more apparent."

Go where the work is?

The changing structure of industry brings with it the "clustering" of major industries into particular regions, and this too affects the nature of today's labor market.

Hsin Ping-lung observes that when promoting industrial development in the past, the government stressed "leaving the farm but not the village," and "home and factory together." Thus industrial parks spread throughout rural areas. For instance, in Taoyuan County alone, there are seven small to medium-sized industrial estates in places such as Pa-te, Tayuan and Kuanyin. But to save transport and communications costs, modern industries are tending more and more to "flock together," becoming concentrated in "celebrity" areas such as the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, the Tainan Science-Based Industrial Park and the industrial zone around Formosa Plastics' 6th Naphtha Cracker at Mailiao.

The "clustering" of industries, high house prices, and other factors like the value people nowadays attach to their children's education, make the cost of moving higher for employees today than it was in the past, so there are many things they will consider before opting to relocate.

For example, says Hsin Ping-lung, unemployment in Taipei City is over 3%, twice the level in Hsinchu. Many people wonder why all these unemployed don't go and find work in Hsinchu, where the streets are "paved with gold." But in a survey made last year by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, among reasons given by unemployed people for failing to take up available job opportunities, "location not ideal" ranked second only to "pay too low." Evidently, people today are not so willing to "go where the work is."

The same survey showed that more than half of unemployed people were unwilling to take up available work because of low pay. This might be taken to mean that many people have inflated expectations, and have succumbed to a philosophy of wanting to find well-paid, cushy jobs close to home. But deeper analysis shows that the government's modified policy on importing foreign labor may also be to blame.

A recent example supports this "reasonable suspicion."

At 2:30 p.m. on 30 April, the 600-plus workers at the Gloria Electronics factory in Taoyuan County's Tayuan Industrial District received an early May Day present: "Starting tomorrow, none of you need come to work any more!" "That's what the boss said, but we all stood there bewildered, thinking it couldn't be true," says Gloria workers' self-help committee chairman Li Tung-he, recalling how everyone was dumbstruck. It was not until 2 May, when the formal notices were posted, that their anger erupted, and they decided "not to spare the boss's feelings or reputation any longer." They occupied the factory, beginning more than 10 days of protest action which included demonstrations all over Taiwan.

The workers were even more miffed when they found out that only the ROC nationals among them were out of a job. 180 Thai workers, who according to the law should have been sent back to their country, had been quietly reassigned to 24 nearby factories, with the local Bureau of Labor Affairs drawing lots to decide their destinations.

"Everyone falls over themselves to get foreign workers. We're worth less to people than they are!" says Li angrily.

Two billion new competitors

Hsin Ping-lung says that a bizarre state of affairs exists in Taiwan's labor market: a severe labor shortage at the same time as high rates of unemployment. From the survey mentioned previously, we can see that "failure to agree on pay" is a major reason. But out-of-work job applicants do not demand the world. All they ask for is 90% or so of the wages of workers of the same grade who are already in employment. However, employers are only prepared to pay something over 70%.

"That 70-80% rate is just about the price of a foreign worker," says Hsin Ping-lun, surmising that it not impossible that when employers place recruitment ads in the newspapers, they actually have foreign workers in mind, and that they "deliberately create a personnel shortage in order to bring in foreign workers." This is something the CLA has already become alert to, and it has stopped approving most organizations' requests to bring in foreign workers. But special-case applications are still considered for large-scale investments and public works projects.

"Why does the government encourage large investment projects? Isn't it to create jobs and boost the domestic economy? But the jobs all go to foreign workers!" Hsin Ping-lung recalls that initially the government stressed that foreign workers would "merely complement local workers, and certainly not replace them or squeeze them out." But this principle has evidently not been kept to.

Looked at more closely, the foreign worker issue reveals the harsh realities of an age of "global competition."

"If we don't let in a moderate number of foreign workers, firms will be forced to close down their factories or move them overseas," says Anita Liu, director of the Manpower Planning Department at the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD). She notes that since the early 1990s, following the end of the cold war, many communist and former communist countries have begun competing in free markets. Mainland China alone can provide hundreds of millions of cheap workers. "Previously only half the world was engaged in competition, but now the number of people competing has doubled!" says Liu.

The WTO effect

She comments that in the face of such dramatic changes in the external environment, in Taiwan's small, open economy it is not only workers who feel insecure-entrepreneurs are also exposed to enormous operating risks. "Of course the government would like to do all it can to protect employees' interests. But the decisive power is in the bosses' hands. If their profitability falls, they will leave, and no-one can stop them!"

Looking to the future, if Taiwan joins the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the end of this year, goods from all over the world will then have access to its markets. This will accelerate the departure of non-competitive industries from Taiwan, and thereby cause the labor market to be reshuffled once again.

"The Ministry of Economic Affairs predicts that joining the WTO will create over 300,000 new jobs in Taiwan, but the CLA fears that it will put more than 200,000 out of work. Who can tell us how tomorrow will turn out?" asks Kuo Kuo-wen of the Taiwan Labour Front.

Kuo realizes that joining the WTO will speed the growth or decline of all kinds of industries. The importance of traditional manufacturing will decline further, to be replaced by newly arisen sectors such as financial, legal and accounting services.

"However you look at it, for industrial workers in their 40s who sweated blood to build Taiwan's economic miracle, none of these changes are good news!" It is plain enough to see that even more people will be thrown on the scrap heap, and be unable to find a livelihood again.

Friends in need

In the face of massive and rapid change both in Taiwan and abroad, blue collar workers react more with frustration than anger: "Times are changing! Just our bad luck to be born at the wrong time!" But what does fill them with rage and disgust is "intentional bankruptcies"-when unscrupulous bosses, under the pretense that business is bad, allow factories to go broke, while in secret they have long since arranged to move production overseas or to transfer assets out of the company. Some even close down the existing company and start up under another name to avoid having to pay workers' retirement bonuses.

The year before last, the Lien Fu garment factory was at the center of a storm when its workers lay down to block railway tracks in a protest action. Twenty years ago the company was Taiwan's biggest garment manufacturer, and its owner's business interests spread as far afield as Thailand, Vietnam, mainland China and even South Africa. "All those factories are bigger than the Taiwan factory," says Chan Chi-ming, who years ago went to South Africa on his boss's behalf to set up the factory there, but who today is chairman of the Lien Fu workers' self-help association.

In early May this year, when Chan saw newspaper reports that the Gloria Electronics plant had suddenly closed without paying a penny in redundancy money, and that the boss was refusing to see or talk to anyone while the despairing workers were beside themselves with worry and anger, he realized that this was a repeat of the Lien Fu incident. He immediately got in touch with the Gloria Electronics self-help association chairman Li Tung-he to offer his "friendly assistance."

Did these bosses close down their factories because they weren't making money? Chan Chi-ming and Li Tung-he both scoff at this suggestion.

"Gloria Electronics was a 'sunrise industry' firm; its products included machine gun aiming systems for the Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, and two years ago it applied for stock market listing. Of course it was making money!" Li Tung-he suspects that the real overriding reason for the closure was that Gloria had been in business for 23 years, and in another few years employees were going to start wanting to retire and take their nest-egg payments. But judging from the current balance of the company's retirement fund account at the Central Trust of China, "they couldn't afford to give three people their retirement payments." What "better" time could there be to close the company down?

"Whenever we get the chance, we remind workers of other companies on the same industrial estate that if you are working for a company that's more than 20 years old, then you'd better watch out-don't let the boss sell you out behind your backs!" Chan Chi-ming says vehemently.

Put the workers before the banks!

However, if the retirement fund fell short, perhaps it could be topped up by selling that big old factory building. The workers realized it might be unrealistic to expect a retirement payment of two "base units" per year worked (one base unit equals the average monthly salary during the six months before retirement)-if only they could collect redundancy pay of one base unit per year worked, they would be satisfied. But in the case of both Lien Fu and Gloria Electronics, the factories were mortgaged up to the hilt, so that even the banks, which come first in line among creditors, did not recover their money, and there wasn't so much as one red cent left over for the workers.

Manufacturing was once the mainstay of Taiwan's economy, and the Labor Standards Law was tailor-made to protect the workers in the manufacturing sector, with all-embracing, detailed regulations covering everything from working conditions to retirement and redundancy payments. But regrettably, the very fact that the law was drafted so strictly has led to lax enforcement. Although it was passed in 1984, it has never been properly implemented. The requirement that retirement fund allocations be paid at a rate of 2-15% of workers' monthly salaries has been largely ignored. Only 15% of enterprises have even opened accounts with the Central Trust of China as required under the law, and in many cases their payments fall far short of the required amounts, sowing the seeds for today's wave of intentional bankruptcies.

"A retirement fund has to be accumulated over many years to be adequate. If they try to make up the difference all at once, where will the boss find that kind of money?" asks Chan Chi-ming, who directly accuses the government of "failure to supervise" and "dereliction of duty."

To address this issue, says Chan Huo-sheng, "Henceforth the CLA will step up monitoring of this aspect. Employers who do not make the payments as required can be fined repeatedly. Although we can't squeeze the bosses too much all at once, at least we can't let them go on riding roughshod over workers' rights."

However, Chan Chi-ming advocates more drastic measures. "There should be an explicit rule that compensation due to workers takes precedence over bank liens. To be sure of getting their loans repaid, the banks would watch companies like hawks, and there would be no need to rely on the government." This proposition that workers' rights should take precedence over lien claims from financial institutions is put forward in several legislators' proposed changes to a bill currently before the Legislative Yuan.

Reexamining the pension cake

For workers to demand the compensation legally due to them is perfectly justified, but looking from the standpoint of managing the national economy, Anita Liu, director of the CEPD's Manpower Planning Department, expresses her worries.

"The retirement payment system put in place years ago by the Labor Standards Law is very hard to implement." Liu says bluntly that a system under which someone can collect a retirement lump sum of up to two months' salary for every year worked really is beyond the means of most employers; on the other hand the qualifying rules for entitlement are very strict, so that although the system seems to create a large cake, only a minority of employees can eat of it, and this too is unfair.

To qualify for a retirement payment under the Labor Standards Law, employees have to have worked for the same organization for 25 years, or 15 years if they are over age 55. This system is built on a number of assumptions: that every enterprise will continue in operation indefinitely; that every enterprise owner will make retirement fund payments on time and in full; that every employee will stay in the same enterprise throughout their working lives; and, preferably, that employees should take retirement at well-spaced intervals to avoid putting too great a strain on the retirement fund at one time.

"Sadly, the experience of well over a decade shows that none of these assumptions stands up!" says Anita Liu. She notes that according to statistics, small and medium-sized enterprises make up more than 95% of Taiwan's companies, and the average life expectancy of such firms is 12 to 15 years. In other words, after a lifetime in employment the vast majority of workers will not see anything of the retirement payment guaranteed by the Labor Standards Law; at most, they can draw an old-age pension under the Labor Insurance scheme.

The retirement payment system imposed by the Labor Standards Law has also had another unwanted side effect: it seriously impairs middle-aged and older unemployed people's chances of finding work again. Liu says that under the law, for each of the first 15 years a person works for an employer, two base units are added to their lump sum entitlement, and for each year above 15 years one base unit is added, up to a maximum of 45 units. From this we can calculate that if a company hires a 45-year-old worker who keeps working until retirement at 60, it will have to pay two base units into the retirement fund for each year of that person's employment; but if it hires a 25-year-old who stays until retirement, the maximum 45 base units will be spread over 35 years, making less than 1.3 units per year-a substantial difference.

One thing that particularly worries Anita Liu is how the application of the Labor Standards Law will affect employment in the many sectors of the economy which are just coming under its umbrella. At present, both workers and employers in these industries have only a vague idea of the regulations, so redundant middle-aged to older workers can still find jobs as, say, concierges, security guards or cleaners in large office or apartment blocks. But from the end of this year the Labor Standards Law will apply to employed people in all sectors of the economy, and although the retirement lump sum system is not retroactive, its future repercussions may be very far-reaching (see Table).

"Once the Labor Standards Law applies to all those low-capital, low-profit businesses in the back streets and alleys, such as eateries, clothes shops, hairdressers and the like, they will have to pay redundancy money if they close down and retirement fund payments if they stay in business, so their operating costs will rise sharply." Liu says she "daren't imagine" the disputes which may arise between workers and employers at that time.

Individual retirement funds for all

In view of the difficulties in implementing the present regulations, the law urgently requires amendment for the good of both employees and employers. A "Workers' Retirement Payments Bill" is currently in the works; in it the Labor Standards Law's original generous retirement system, paid for entirely by employers and allowing for a nest-egg payment of up to two months' salary for every year worked, is to be severely curtailed and changed to a system under which employers make monthly payments of 6% of each employee's salary into a retirement fund. In other words, each year employers will only be obliged to pay in 72% (6% x 12) of an employee's monthly income.

"If employees feel this is not enough, they will be free to negotiate increased amounts with their employers," says Anita Liu. For example, if the boss and workers each pay an additional 2%, then the workers will be doing a bit of "enforced saving" for their pensions.

The most important reform envisaged under the new system is the change from a collective retirement fund account opened by the firm, to an individual account for each worker. Every employee will have his or her own retirement account, and if they change jobs their accounts will go with them. Thus people will no longer have to "sit out" a set number of years with an employer to get their nest-egg entitlement, and will also be able to check their own accounts regularly, to be sure their employers are paying in the full amount.

As might be expected, because retirement payments will be much smaller under the new system, employees of public-sector organizations and large private enterprises who enjoy good benefits are up in arms, and vowing to oppose the change; on the other hand, small business owners who never intended to stay in business permanently and are not willing to pay a penny towards their employees' retirements are also complaining bitterly.

Taking a more neutral stance, Anita Liu comments: "This time around the cake is plainer, but law-abiding employers will not bear too heavy a burden, and all employed people will be able to get a slice"-from the perspective of social justice, the new system has many advantages.

Watered-down requirements

Apart from retirement payments, many other provisions of the Labor Standards Law, such as restrictions on working hours and overtime, and on night work for women, as well as redundancy payments and so on, are also targeted for substantial "relaxation." The goal here is to give employers greater flexibility, and encourage them to make more use of part-timers, women, middle-aged and older unemployed people, and other groups who are marginalized in the present labor market.

"The Labor Standards Law has put all the emphasis on protecting workers, but the regulations are too inflexible, and by tying people's hands they have actually achieved the opposite," says Anita Liu. The upcoming changes to the law will move as far as possible in the direction of "relaxation," and of "freedom to negotiate" between employers and employees; the other labor laws currently awaiting scrutiny by the Legislative Yuan, such as the new Labor Insurance Bill and a Labor Unions Bill, follow the same trend.

But is relaxing the law to make way for "free negotiation" a viable proposition?

Hsieh Kuo-hsiung, a research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Social Sciences, has doubts. "This approach overlooks a fundamental point: in Taiwan, labor and capital have never been equal in status, and if they are not on an equal footing, how can one expect negotiations between them to be fair?"

Hsieh notes that in the US, sectors such as the steel and automotive industries have powerful labor unions which can play a leading role in determining the direction which relations between labor and management take, so there is no need for the government to get involved; and in various European countries, left-wing labor alliances are just as powerful as right-wing political parties, and alternate with them in government, so the idea of "collective bargaining" is not an empty phrase. But the situation in Taiwan is very different.

No more father figures

"In the past, the government always approached workers with a patriarchal attitude, on the one hand protecting them, but on the other suppressing their sense of autonomy. As a result, to this day when workers have problems, whether they go to petition the Legislative Yuan or throw eggs at the Executive Yuan, they always have the helpless, tragic air of people appealing to an 'impartial' higher authority," laments Hsieh Kuo-hsiung. Today, he says, patriarchal authority has waned, and has been replaced by nitty-gritty bargaining between all kinds of interest groups. Working people should realize that things have changed, and respond accordingly.

In fact, working people are well aware that the situation has changed, and have attempted to display their power in various labor movement marches. But to mobilize the power of the workers takes organization, and among Taiwan's more than 30,000 enterprises with 30 or more employees, trade unions are only active in a tiny 1000-plus, or less than 4%.

Liu Yong, president of the Taipei County Federation of Trade Unions, who has been making contact with union activists all over Taiwan with a view to setting up a national federation of industrial unions, recalls that 10 years ago, when he first got involved in organizing a union, he was dismissed by his employer, the Tatung Company, on the grounds that his activities were "bringing the company into disrepute." But he did not give in, and fought the company in a three-year legal battle before finally winning back his right to work. He says that worker consciousness depends on awareness and standing up for one's rights. "Don't talk to me about being under-educated or under-informed-as far as I can see those are just excuses!"

During this year's May Day rally, Liu Yong led a group which burst into the Legislative Yuan. When he saw the parliamentary assistants there, he didn't miss the opportunity to get in a quick dig: "Today is International Labor Day: all employed people in the country to whom the Labor Standards Law applies have the right to the day off work. [Labor Standards Law protection was extended to parliamentary assistants on 1 March this year.] You people spend all your time sorting out laws-surely you wouldn't fail to stand up for your own rights?"

Liu Yong says that to raise worker consciousness, what is needed first and foremost within the enterprise is an "independent trade union" which is not "in the management's pocket"; after first establishing such an independent union, one should then go on to set up a "collective bargaining" mechanism. For instance, the employee share ownership system introduced by Tatung two years ago was gained from the management by the union through persistent, reasoned argument, backed up with all kinds of operating statistics.

Workers have also come to realize that standing for election and accumulating political capital outside the enterprise is the only road to being able to sit down with management as equals.

"In the past we hoped that the representatives appointed by the opposition parties could be spokespersons for working people," says Ke Chin-lung, president of the federation of the unions of Formosa Plastics' 24 plants. "But today, seeing how the political parties are working hand in glove with each other, with none of them putting workers' interests first, we have given up that hope."

Ke, who is currently standing for election as a local councilor, says that "spokespersons" cannot be relied on, and working people have to look out for themselves. The fact that public funding for election campaigns was one of the six demands put forward at the May Day rally reflects working people's strong desire to participate in politics themselves.

Looking for an enduring status

Taking a balanced view, Chan Huo-sheng acknowledges: "Over the last several decades, as the economy has taken off, workers in Taiwan have gained prosperity, and except for marginal groups such as aborigines, women, middle-aged and older people and the disabled, workers generally are not disadvantaged." But in the last few years, with dramatic changes in the political environment, skyrocketing property prices, massive stock market swings, political graft financed by money-laden conglomerates, and an unstable labor market, workers' "sense of comparative exploitedness" has grown ever more acute, and their mood has become far more volatile.

"Fortunately Taiwan is not a developing country any more, and we no longer need to make economic growth the overriding objective," says Hsin Ping-lung. "At this crucial time, the government really should allocate more resources to taking care of working people."

But Hsieh Kuo-hsiung comments that labor issues are highly complex. In the final analysis, we have to ask: "Just how does our society regard employed people?" Is their work a commodity bosses pay for in a simple monetary transaction? Are they a "factor of production" along with land or electricity and water supplies? Or do we recognize working people as complete, independent individuals who can learn and develop of their own volition and are an asset worth investing in and protecting? Further, does an employee's relative economic value have any bearing on his or her right to enjoy the basic human rights of freedom from poverty and from fear?

When Lien Fu self-help association chairman Chan Chi-ming calls repeatedly for a revolution, and the sacked Gloria Electronics workers plan to go to CKS International Airport to "roast pigeons" (with the implied threat of "accidentally" releasing some into aircraft flight paths), it is time to take Taiwan's labor problems seriously. Finding ways to keep employed people looking forward to a better tomorrow, rather than falling into a state of resignation and despair in the expectation that their lot will never improve, will be a test of our society's wisdom.

[Picture Caption]

Amid rapid changes in Taiwan's industrial structure, many labor-intensive traditional industries have relocated overseas. But why would a "sunrise industry" firm, with its much better prospects, also close down its factory? And what will happen to the thousands of workers suddenly left without jobs? Pictured here is an empty building at the Gloria Electronics plant in Taoyuan County's Tayuan Industrial District.

As high-tech industries, which rely on huge investments and cutting-edge technology, have become the new darlings of the industrial world, opportunities for ordinary blue-collar workers have become more and more limited. Shown here is a scene inside Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation's factory. (photo by Diago Chiu)

Large industrial robots like this one, which do not expect sick leave, retirement bonuses or redundancy payments, have gradually replaced humans as the main workers on the production line.

The gradual disappearance from Taiwan of labor-intensive industries such as ready-to-wear garment making and toy assembly has forced many middle-aged and older workers to abandon their existing skills and seek new livelihoods. (Sinorama file photo)

To prevent labor shortages slowing the progress of major public works projects, private contractors can apply for special permission to import foreign workers. But this has resulted in many aboriginal laborers who used to "follow the work" from site to site being faced with unemployment.

Mr. Wu, an electrician, was injured by an electric shock while working on high voltage equipment. This accident changed his life, and he is currently campaigning for the passage of an Occupational Injury Protection Bill. He says: "I hope the government can do something to give victims of industrial accidents a future!"

They have a low basic wage, long working hours, and swollen feet from standing all day. But if these department store sales assistants "sneak" a quick sit-down, they m ay be fined NT$500. Once they are covered by the Labor Standards Law, will their working conditions improve?

Three-Phase Extension of Labor Standards Law Protection [Picture]

On May Day this year, Taiwan's labor movement organized a major rally on the theme of "Building a Better Society." But mobilizing and developing the power of working people will still take a lot of effort.

Large industrial robots like this one, which do not expect sick leave, retirement bonuses or redundancy payments, have gradually replaced humans as the main workers on the production line.

The gradual disappearance from Taiwan of labor-intensive industries such as ready-to-wear garment making and toy assembly has forced many middle-aged and older workers to abandon their existing skills and seek new livelihoods. （Sinorama file photo）

To prevent labor shortages slowing the progress of major public works projects, private contractors can apply for special permission to import foreign workers. But this has resulted in many aboriginal laborers who used to "follow the work" from site to site being faced with unemployment.

Mr. Wu, an electrician, was injured by an electric shock while working on high voltage equipment. This accident changed his life, and he is currently campaigning for the passage of an Occupational Injury Protection Bill. He says: "I hope the government can do something to give victims of industrial accidents a future!".

They have a low basic wage, long working hours, and swollen feet from standing all day. But if these department store sales assistants "sneak" a quick sit-down, they m ay be fined NT$500. Once they are covered by the Labor Standards Law, will their working conditions improve?

Three-Phase Extension of Labor Standards Law Protection [Picture].

On May Day this year, Taiwan's labor movement organized a major rally on the theme of "Building a Better Society." But mobilizing and developing the power of working people will still take a lot of effort.