EU Study trip: Migrant care workers' rights

Update from EU study trip to Taiwan

I currently am in Taipei, Taiwan as part of an EU delegation to Taiwan. I have been invited to participate as a trade unionist and an expert on migrant workers’ rights and care.

Yesterday I spoke about tackling labour shortages and migrant care worker rights at the EU-Taiwan Exchange Forum in Taipei, Taiwan.

I learned a lot from Taiwanese Indonesian and Filipino participants who spoke about the dominance of homecare provision in Taiwan; the exploitative broker system in which migrant care workers need to pay a fee upfront in their home country as well as a monthly service fee in Taiwan; as well as the exclusion of migrant care workers from the Labour Standards Act.

While the minimum wage for care workers has been raised from NT$17,000 to NT$20,000, there is a lot more work to do be done to safeguard care workers' rights. Our delegation will be addressing the brokerage system, recruitment practices and working conditions over the next few days of our stay.

As I said in my keynote speech: Quality care is a human right. The foundation of quality care are fair working conditions, and fair working conditions are only possible with strong union organisation, and collective agreements.

Today we will be discussing migrant workers' rights in distant water fishing.