Taiwan Votes 2024: From fixing trash disposal to fixing pipes, Taiwanese are finding ways to make work pay off – CNA Feedzy

TAIPEI: As university students renting a place of their own, Mr Ray Chen and his friends found themselves constantly having to chase after the garbage truck, trash in hand, as it went on its collection route.

In December 2020 when they were in their final year, they decided to start a company “to provide a better solution for waste disposal”.

A few months later when COVID-19 cases surged in Taiwan in May 2021, Mr Chen and two other founders faced a decision: Whether to shut their fledgling venture, or expand it to districts in Taipei beyond Wenshan — where they lived and studied – “because there was more and more demand for our services during that time”.

They chose the latter. Their company, Tracle, offers subscription plans for doorstep pick-up of trash for customers such as households or small offices, who can schedule appointments with a few taps on their mobile phones.

Now operating in Taipei and New Taipei City, Mr Chen and his team hope to expand to other cities like Tainan, Taoyuan and Kaohsiung. They are also aiming for Tracle to break even this year.

In the three years since founding Tracle, Mr Chen said he has seen more resources dedicated to start-ups in Taiwan – for instance, programmes in universities teaching entrepreneurship. 

More companies, such as communication app LINE, have programmes to help start-ups grow, he said.

The three Tracle founders also took a low-interest Young Entrepreneur Financing Loan of NTD$2 million (US$64,334) from the government and held a seed funding round in 2022. 

“I feel positive about the environment,” said Mr Chen, 26.

Supporting start-ups, improving livelihoods and economic growth are a key issue in Taiwan’s 2024 presidential and legislative elections, which take place tomorrow (Jan 13).

The presidential frontrunner, William Lai Ching-te of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, for instance, has said he wants to grow Taiwan’s start-up ecosystem and create 20,000 jobs among start-ups in five years.

Candidates have also pledged to increase salaries, another longstanding gripe of workers in Taiwan. 

The minimum wage increased to NTD$27,470 this year, and Kuomintang’s presidential hopeful Hou Yu-ih wants to gradually increase it to NTD$33,000. Mr Lai has also said he wants to mandate that new publicly traded companies pay their employees at least NTD$30,000 a month.

“Should Taiwan raise wages? I think we should. Many workers feel their wages are undervalued, such as professors,” said Dr Huang Jr-Tsung, Distinguished Professor of Public Finance at National Chengchi University. The salary of a professor in Taiwan is about a-quarter that of a professor in Singapore, for instance.

While sluggish or negative economic growth is bad for workers because it leads to higher unemployment, robust growth does not necessarily mean workers’ salaries increase in tandem, he noted.

This is because of systemic issues and the way Taiwan’s economy has developed. For instance, Taiwan’s export orientation is partly why wages have not risen in tandem with economic growth, as higher production cost hurts export competitiveness, he said.

Since 2000, official statistics show annual real economic growth is about 3.79 per cent, but salary growth is 1 to 2 per cent, he noted. After accounting for inflation of about 1 per cent per year, real wages have almost no growth, he said.

PAY WILL INCREASE FOR YOUNGSTERS; SKILLS NEED TO LEVEL UP

But salaries for at least one group of Taiwanese – the young – will certainly improve, economists and labour experts said. 

This is because of Taiwan’s low fertility rate, which was 0.87 in 2022. As young workers become more scarce, employers will pay them more, Dr Huang noted.

But increased salaries must be accompanied by improved skills or Taiwan would become a less attractive place for investment, he said.

Efforts to increase salaries in Taiwan must begin with the education system, experts told CNA.

What is taught in universities must align more closely with what employers and the economy need, they said.

Too many Taiwanese students are “afraid” of the maths, science and engineering fields, noted Dr Huang.

As a result, there is a shortage of workers in manufacturing, semiconductors and artificial intelligence. 

According to data from human resources platform 104 Job Bank, out of a record 1.017 million job openings on its site in September last year, 189,000 openings were in the electronics, information, software and semiconductor enterprises.

The semiconductor industry has had to turn to foreigners for its talent pipeline, noted Dr Liu Meng-chun, director of the China economy division at the Chung-hua Institution for Economic Research. 

Semiconductors, or chips, account for about 15 per cent of Taiwan’s gross domestic product and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer.

The National Taiwan University (NTU), for instance, will set up an international semiconductor programme this year and recruit an initial batch of 25 students from overseas.

Quality of education is also uneven among Taiwan’s universities, noted labour expert Cheng Chih-yu of National Chengchi University. 

Taiwan’s tech industry generally focuses on graduates from the top universities like NTU and National Cheng Kung University. 

Students from mid- to lower-tier universities may not be competitive enough and could job-hop every six months or so in search of more stable or higher-paying jobs.

But the lack of funds stands in the way of resolving skills mismatch and uneven quality of universities, he noted.

This is something Taiwan People’s Party presidential candidate Ko Wen-je has said he would address if he wins. Dr Ko said he would consider reforms such as closure of universities with under-enrolment. 

Last November, he cited the figure of 0.39 per cent of gross domestic product spent on higher education in Taiwan, and proposed increases in education spending. 

He also aimed to have at least two to three Taiwan universities ranked among the world’s top 100 in 10 years’ time.

GLOBAL TRENDS, AGEING POPULATION

To provide good economic opportunities, the Taiwanese government should formulate policies to adjust to global trends such as “China+1”, where companies with bases in China diversify production to other countries to protect their supply chain and export markets from a potential fallout between the United States and China, said Dr Liu.

“How should Taiwan’s policies respond, how to continue to develop Taiwan’s economy by adjusting production lines? We feel this should be a very important policy area Taiwan’s new government should address,” he said.

Domestically, there are many investment opportunities in Taiwan such as in urban renewal, the digital and green economies, and the silver economy, he said. These areas are closely related to improving quality of life, he noted.

Taiwan’s challenges do not necessarily stem from cross-strait issues but from international trends and labour shortage due to an ageing population, he added.

Those who have gone into professions less favoured by their peers have found themselves making a good living. 

Mr Su Hsuan-tsan, 31, set up his own company providing electrical and plumbing services in 2018. He now earns over NTD$2 million a year. 

He opted for a less conventional path early on, enrolling in a high school’s division of continuing education, where students attend night classes. He learnt vehicle repair in school, but also tried his hand and got certified in many fields such as plumbing in his spare time.

His parents own a company that provides cleaning services, and he had tagged along for work assignments since he was in preschool, he said. 

“I’m not afraid of dirt, heat, tiredness or hard work,” he said.

His company, Leadership Engineering, operates in Hsinchu and northern Taiwan. It also takes on projects in outlying islands – he spoke to CNA from Penghu, where he was engaged in a project to replace lighting with energy saving lamps.

“We just do the work that others don’t do. We are willing to work at night, take on small jobs — even just changing a light bulb,” he said. “I feel there’s no end to learning in the plumbing and electrical fields.”

His advice to young people is to try many types of work and increase their professional skills. 

For instance, when they are in school, they should take advantage of its resources to obtain relevant certificates. 

“If you have more expertise, you can have more choices when you enter society,” he said.