Speed up! Addressing forced labor risks in Taiwan's car, bicycle and electronics industries
Taiwan is one of the world’s 25 largest economies, known for its sizable electronics industry, while other manufacturing industries - including car parts and bicycles - also contribute to exports.
Majority of Taiwan's 750,000 registered migrant workers are employed in manufacturing, where risking debt bondage is the rule and not the exception, as many incur high debt to pay recruiters exorbitant fees to get jobs. For decades, Taiwanese civil society groups have campaigned against punitive migrant worker conditions, including recruitment fees, but next to no factory cases have reached the international public domain.
This report is a compilation of such factory cases. Its purpose to illustrate how migrant's conditions in Taiwan are directly connected to companies and consumers worldwide. And to illustrate that change-making is possible, even on a shoestring budget. So far, worker reimbursement ($5m) and fee exemptions ($2m) add up to estimatedly $7 million an is expected to reach $10 million in 2025.
The cases are extracted from investigations done between 2022 and 2025 by investigative journalist Peter Bengtsen and team, including around 200 migrant worker interviews. Some of the cases have already been published in a dozen articles from The Vietnamese Debt Bondage Gamble (2022) to The Bicycle Industry's Dirty Secret (2025), but are now - for easy reference - gathered in one place. The report covers work in progress. New cases are opened continuously, as workers from more factories speak up. So far, four import ban petitions have been filed to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) based on results from these cases.
Migrant workers' conditions at Taiwanese manufacturers lack proper attention by foreign buyers, consumers, investors and international civil society organizations. Encouragingly, foreign buyers and Taiwanese suppliers engaged and remedied migrant workers in several of the report's cases. Momentum might be increasing, but avoiding debt bondage and other abuses require proper prevention, not just remediation after the damage is done. The report urges everyone to speed up.
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