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Time for workers to
make their demands
By Lai Hsiang-Ling ¿à»§D
People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (§º·¡·ì) seems to have decided to
follow through on his presidential bid to the bitter end. As a result, the Hakka
vote in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli counties has become a crucial indicator of
the election outcome.
All three presidential candidates are trying to win voters¡¦ sympathies by
speaking Hakka and making election promises about the tourism and cultural
industries. There have even been emotional, ethnically tinged calls for ¡§a
female Hakka president.¡¨ What all this really signifies is that cities in
Taiwan¡¦s mountain regions have been excluded from, and fallen behind, when it
comes to the distribution of regional cultural and political resources.
Does the displacement or division of Hakka voters really mean that the Hakka as
a group have obtained appropriate political status? No.
Because the Hakka still have a particular political status in Taiwan, they, just
like workers, are described as ¡§disadvantaged.¡¨ However, the difference between
these groups is that Hakka have been labeled a ¡§hard-working, thrifty and
stubborn¡¨ people who refuse to give up, when they are in fact a disadvantaged
group whose subculture must be protected.
Workers, on the other hand, seem to be an independent group whose rights are
legally protected, but they have in reality become mere bargaining chips in a
market long dependent on economic development.
Comparing the two, I feel that workers ¡X a huge group ¡X are worse off. Unlike
ethnic groups, workers as a group cannot be identified with a particular
locality, nor are they politically sensitive in the same way as veterans or
foreign spouses are.
Instead, they have lost the importance that makes politicians gauge their impact
as a voting group or try to win them over with pork barrel policies, as well as
the ability to turn around and say to politicians: ¡§Hey, there are a lot of
votes to be had here, what do you have to offer us?¡¨
The question is what workers should do to create a set of attributes or an image
unique to them as a group to give them political weight.
Being a ¡§worker¡¨ is not a particular profession ¡X workers are a social class
deprived of democratic rights by capital and management. For them, it is much
harder than for Hakka people or foreign spouses to shake the target of their
struggle. Because their experience in the workplace is neither democratic nor
independent, workers are incapable of believing in the democratic society that
politicians talk about at election time. For those who spend their days within
the constraints of an undemocratic workplace, this is a false democracy that
only serves to hide the cracks.
The increased tension comes not so much from the attractive election promises
that politicians are making as the fact that capitalism will not give workers
the democratic politics ¡X the right to political participation, a fair
distribution of resources, and dignity ¡X that they demand.
Once they gain these three rights, the current thinking that informs policies of
fairness and justice today will be forced into retreat because that is the
compromise that will be proposed by empowered workers. If this kind of ¡§social
reality¡¨ is understood by workers, they will become the active drivers of
political and democratic reform.
Democracy in Taiwan still has a long way to go. In the coming elections,
Taiwan¡¦s workers will still be controlled by the threat of unpaid leave and the
fear of a change in status to temporary labor, but one day workers will fight
for democracy in the workplace and have what it takes to run for president.
Lai Hsiang-ling is a spokesperson for Raging Citizens Act Now.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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