By DIEGO MORRA
If Filipino workers enjoy the highest minimum wage in Asia, as alleged by the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP), then there is absolutely no reason for them to try their luck overseas, in the US to be arrested by Trump immigration agents, or to Taiwan, where brokers make money out of their monthly salaries, and even to the Middle East, where many of our compatriots have been abused and murdered.
As the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) and even the lobby group Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF) and the various capitalist chambers have asserted, any increase in wages would “wreck” the economy, reduce job generation, punish small businesses and “torpedo” the country’s advance to become an upper middle income country (UMIC), a desire that horribly means nothing to workers, those in the informal sector and the population in general. Include in the anti-wage hike gang the likes of Sens. Joel Villanueva and Migz Zubiri, who have slammed the proposed legislated wage increase of P200 approved by the House of Representatives.
All these creatures have a running dispute with common sense but they have the unstinting support of Malacanang, the Cabinet economic cluster led by President Bongbong Marcos Jr.’s fair-haired boy Frederick Go who pleaded an end to legislated wage increases and tossed the issue of wage determination to the regional wage boards, where bureaucrats are engaged in combating economic reality and approving measly pay increases that cannot match the inflation rate. The latest approval for Metro Manila raised the wage by P50, or from P645 a day to P695, while oil price hikes are a dime a dozen and power and water tariffs rise unchecked. If you go by state pay scales, check the yawning gap between the salaries of contractuals, job order staffers and the big bosses, from the President down to the lowly clerks and janitors and you will see what injustice means.
As recent articles carried by Rest of World show, the Philippine domestic labor market is not paradise, for which reason Filipinos are flying to Taiwan in droves to work in semiconductors companies. Michael Beltran and Hsiuwen Liu reported for Rest of World on May 28, 2025 that “many chip manufacturers now have lines almost entirely staffed by Filipinos. As more are brought in to do the hard labor required to produce the high-end chips, battles with brokers are on the rise.” Surely, Taiwan is not paradise for skilled Filipino workers and Fr. Joy Tajonera, the Catholic priest in charge of the shelter in Taichung said,” brokers use misinformation to manipulate their clients, preying on their limited knowledge of Taiwan’s labor regulations. Around seven out of 10 migrants seeking the shelter’s help have trouble with their broker, he told Rest of World.”
So, is that jumping from the frying pan into the fire? Jaded observers said the Philippine government has never had success transforming the labor recruitment system of Taiwan, which ensures that Filipino workers toe the line through brokers, who control much of the lives of Filipino workers once they are sucked into the factories. “Migrant workers coming to Taiwan are assigned a broker before they arrive. The brokers have incredible sway over the workers’ lives. They manage their paperwork, accommodation, meals, transport, insurance, and other aspects. When employers get complaints from workers, the brokers handle them. When workers want to change jobs, the broker has to sign off. Too often, brokers abuse this power, Filipino workers told Rest of World, overcharging for basic amenities, ignoring their grievances, and sometimes even demanding bribes,” Beltran and Hsiwuen Lu reported.
“Migrants are taught that brokers are on their side,” said Tajonera. “But they’re just agents of the employers.” In sum, broker companies in Taiwan act as global HR departments as they know where to find hundreds of Filipino workers quickly and do the reams of paperwork required to get them into the factories. This has been the system for the past 30 years, and Filipino recruitment agencies ended up fighting with each other to be in the good graces of Taiwanese brokers and the government itself. “Each migrant worker in Taiwan is attached to a specific broker who acts as their official representative with the employer and the government. Taiwan has more than 1,700 active registered broker firms, some bringing in laborers for over 200 manufacturers,” Beltran reported. “Many of these Filipino chip workers complained that brokers control too many aspects of their lives. They said the brokers reduced their take-home pay with fees, and acted as the agent of the company rather than of the employee.”
Lennon Ying-Da Wang, director of Serve the People Association, another Filipino migrant shelter, said Taiwan’s labor recruitment system differs from that of other countries since migrant workers need a broker’s permission to do anything. “It gives businesses a channel to hire cheap laborers in a very short time,” Wang told Rest of World. “But the whole practice exacerbates the burden of the workers.” So big is the demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips from Taiwan that it has gone on a hiring spree, especially of Filipinos already working for microelectronics companies in the Philippines. This year, 20,000 will be hired, bringing the total number of Filipino workers to nearly 100,000, the Philippine Migrant Workers Office in Taipei confirmed. Filipino workers quit from their well-paying jobs in the Philippines only to be paid lower in Taiwan, which operates factories 24 hours a day, in some instances controlled by Filipino managers who are just as strict as their Taiwan counterparts.
The workers are stuffed into dormitories owned by broker agencies, with more than 10 people in a small room sometimes and curfews are observed strictly. “Brokers charge a fixed monthly service fee and sometimes additional fees for rooms, meals, utilities and transportation, they said. While some tech companies subsidize the broker fees for their workers, many Filipinos said they lose around a fifth of their salary to brokers,” Beltran disclosed. Worker pay in the Philippines is meager but exploitation is harsher in Taiwan. This is like being between Scylla and Charybdis, is an idiom deriving from Greek mythology, or between the devil and the deep blue sea and between a rock and a hard place. Choosing the less of the two evils always leads to a disaster. Without raising wages, the Philippine government, Congress and the business lobby groups guarantee that Filipino workers are right smack in a cul-de-sac from where there is no escape.
