Firms must fund pensions for long-term migrant workers from April: MOL

Taipei, Oct. 16 (CNA) Taiwan's Ministry of Labor (MOL) has ruled that employers must begin setting aside pension funds for blue-collar foreign workers who have worked for the same employer for more than 10 years.

The recently-introduced directive, due to take effect on April 1 next year, requires employers to contribute between 2 and 15 percent of workers' wages each month to a retirement fund, the MOL said.

Huang Wei-chen (黃維琛), director of the ministry's Department of Employment Welfare and Retirement, said blue-collar foreign workers are covered under the old labor pension system but employers were previously exempt from making pension contributions to them.

That exemption was based on earlier interpretations that viewed migrant workers -- a general term used in Taiwan to refer to blue-collar laborers predominately from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam -- as "supplementary labor," since they were only allowed to stay in Taiwan for up to six years, Huang said.

Huang said the ministry issued the new directive after migrant labor policies were gradually relaxed and the Long-term Retention Program for Migrant Workers was introduced, giving foreign workers more time to qualify for pensions.

According to Huang, more than 7,000 companies in Taiwan employ blue-collar foreign workers, though not all have opened labor retirement reserve accounts.