Transparentem welcomes the Taiwan Textile Federation’s recommendation released yesterday urging Taiwanese textile mills to protect migrant workers in the industry through responsible recruitment and employment. This is a critical step toward reducing recruitment abuse and forced labor risks in the industry and advancing protections for foreign migrant workers. We look forward to the Taiwanese Ministry of Labor’s forthcoming guidelines on responsible recruitment, expected for release in January.
We commend the ongoing advocacy of the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) and the Fair Labor Association (FLA) in partnership with TTF and Taiwanese civil society and are encouraged by the growing momentum around responsible recruitment in Taiwan. Transparentem’s findings on recruitment-related exploitation of migrant workers in Taiwan includes worker-borne recruitment fees of up to $6,000 USD, the highest we have documented in our investigations. This underscores the urgency of addressing migrant worker safeguards in Taiwan.
Workers must be reimbursed for all recruitment-related fees they have paid, regardless of how those fees were used or misused by intermediaries. Employers are responsible for ensuring that their hiring and recruitment systems do not expose workers to corruption, excessive charges, or other forms of exploitation. When recruitment fees are discovered, workers should be made whole swiftly. No worker should ever bear the financial consequences of misconduct that occurs within a recruitment chain they cannot control. There must also be no repercussions for workers who report having paid fees or who raise concerns about recruitment practices.
Transparentem’s investigation found that some workers at nine suppliers had paid recruitment fees. Some suppliers have now committed to repay their workers by specific dates and six suppliers have begun doing so. Workers are owed more than $8 million USD, according to calculations by auditors. Some downstream buyers — major apparel brands — are contributing financially. Transparentem commends such contributions and recommend that they be completed quickly and transparently. Unfortunately, at least two suppliers and their buyers do not yet have plans to fully repay all of their eligible workers.
We strongly encourage buyers and suppliers to play their part in remediation and repayment, and for all efforts to address these issues to directly include the voices of migrant workers and Taiwanese civil society.
Tranparentem will continue working with partners across industry, civil society, workers organizations, and government to ensure this important step leads to real and measurable improvements in migrant workers’ lives.