Taiwan's Labour Resistance and Organising in the New Millennium

The research aims to explore the recent development of organised labour in Taiwan where has shown astonishing degradation of wages and working conditions in the new millennium. The independent labour movement has emerged from the democratic transition in the second half of 1980s. However, unlike the stories in South Korea and Hong Kong, since the late 1990s Taiwanese society has witnessed a continuous decline of union density and union influence at workplace as well as national politics. The crisis is clear: the independent union movement is losing its strength in traditional manufacturing sector and failing to represent workers in emerging industries such as electronic and service industries where in particular the irregular employment is prevailing. Several students of labour studies have identified the specific institutional and cultural constraints on Taiwan’s union movement. However, the recent development of labour movement, regarding to how the movement breaks through the predicaments, is worthy to take a closer look. The author will first illustrate the efforts and crisis of the labour movement in the hostile institutional and political environment. Second, without a strong and solid national union federation, the role of local federation, industrial federation, and labour NGO will be discussed. Finally, the amendment of Trade Union Law in 2010 removed several rigid regulations on union formation and has encouraged a plenty of organising campaigns in largely unorganised industries. In final part the author will focus on these new organising strategies and evaluate their effect and possibilities.