Taiwan’s caregivers and domestic workers need a day off

March 12, 2010 -- For the occasion of Women’s Day, Caritas Taiwan participated in the rally organized by Migrant Empowerment Network in Taiwan in front of Executive Yuan on March 5, 2010. The NGOs have been lobbying the concerns of domestic workers and caregivers who are mostly women, to be included in the Labor Standards Law.

In the situation of Taiwan, caregivers who are also considered as domestic workers are working for as much as 12.5 hours a day and they neither received overtime pay nor avail of one day off per week because employers do not allow them. Thus, they are vulnerable to stress and some recourse to running-away from their employers and become irregular or undocumented.

For several years, the NGOs that are serving migrant workers have been lobbying for the revision of the Household Service Act which governs the domestic workers.

The basic needs of the workers should not be denied nor regarded as merely public responsibility. It should be included in the Labor Standards Law to protect the rights of the migrant workers.

According to the statistics of the Bureau of Employment and Vocation Training, Taiwan has a total number of 353,805 migrant workers as of January 2010, with Indonesians as the largest in number followed by Vietnamese, Filipinos and Thai.

For several years now, Justice and Peace and Caritas Taiwan has been serving Filipino, Indonesian, and Thai migrant workers. - Caritas Taiwan