wages or failing to pay overtime wages for working on a rest day or holiday)
of the Labor Standards Act. In addition, the MOL further increased the
number of investigated employers in the student worker inspection special
project to 1,500 employers in 2019. Up to August 31, 2019, a total of 1,179
employers in the special project had been inspected, and 84 employers were
still found to be in violation of the regulations. The MOL further
implemented regular supervisory inspection on the businesses most
frequently employing student workers. As of August 31, 2019, a total of
4,243 regular employers had been inspected, and the total number of
violating employers reached 850 (20%), indicating that the prevalence of
violations still calls for further improvement.
(2)
There have been numerous reports that vocational and technological colleges
have been enrolling overseas students through human resource agencies in
recent years. However, there is a lack of connection between the work
content performed at the company for internships and the study in the
subjects they are ostensibly learning at school, and students are in fact forced
to sign illegal part-time job agreements, work overtime, have their passports
held by employers, or even be exploited by the school and human resource
agencies with improper deductions and other issues, significantly damaging
the image of our nation’s internationalism and higher education. The
government must eliminate schools enrolling overseas students through
illegal brokers, assuming the name of school studies for labor in practice, or
even making students into cheap labor with overtime work. It must stop those
making illegal profits through such improper practices that lead to the
criticism “deceptive internship, unfair work treatment in practice.” After the
investigation and controls implemented by the Control Yuan, the MOE has
established a complaint channel exclusively for overseas students, as well as
a “task force for guiding universities and colleges enrolling overseas
students” to integrate cross-department resources and to jointly assist
overseas students in their safe study in Taiwan.
(3)
The MOE’s supervision and management of schools’ enrollment of general
overseas students are considered relatively weak compared to that of the New
Southbound International Programs of Industry-Academia Cooperation
organized by schools. The cases of violation of labor regulations, where
overseas students enrolled by schools became “student workers” in recent
years, are mostly schools for the general foreign student studying abroad in
Taiwan, rather than the New Southbound International Programs of IndustryAcademia Cooperation or under other new southbound policy related
programs. Accordingly, to eliminate such improper cases of exploiting
“student workers,” the government should establish a cross-department
supervisory system for school enrolling general overseas students in order to
protect the rights and interests of these students in Taiwan.
78