(OSV News) ─ When Charles Niece graduated from Seton Hall University, he considered pursuing further studies. But first he wanted a change of scenery.
"My knowledge of Christian mission was confined to a classroom, formed by reading scholarly journals and writing research papers. I needed a year off with exposure to the real world," Niece said.
He applied to the Maryknoll short-term volunteer program, was accepted and in 2019 flew to Taiwan, where he was assigned to work with Maryknoll Father Joyalito Tajonera in Taichung, Taiwan's third-largest city. There Father Tajonera -- known as "Father Joy" -- runs a shelter for migrant workers housed in the Tanzi Catholic Church, a lively congregation centered in the Filipino migrant community.
Niece helped out in the parish and studied Mandarin Chinese at Providence University. He also practiced what he called a ministry of presence, listening to Filipinos in the congregation and shelter. He soon started learning Tagalog.
Before his one-year commitment was up, international travel ground to a halt as governments closed their borders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Niece enrolled in a master's program in business administration at Providence.
As migrant workers wrestled with the pandemic, Niece listened to their growing concerns. He wanted to do more than just refer them to the government's Ministry of Labor. He began helping the migrants carefully prepare the documentation they needed to prove allegations of abuse or unfair treatment. Often that meant preparing written complaints in English, as functionaries in the labor office rarely spoke Tagalog.
"I'd save all relevant text messages that proved the employer or agent was threatening or deceiving the worker. I'd review pay stubs and timecards to compute years of unpaid wages. And I'd review bank statements revealing exactly when unauthorized deductions occurred," he told Maryknoll Magazine.
During a business ethics class, Niece studied the infamous Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh in 2013 that took the lives of 1,134 workers and injured more than 2,500 others. He learned about the Foxconn suicides in China, mostly in 2010 and 2011, which were proven to have been linked to exploitative conditions. These events illustrated how giant international brands failed to address human rights risks in their supply chains.
Niece also learned about supplier codes of conduct, the corporate policies that were supposed to guarantee basic rights in factories around the world. He had heard enough from the Filipino workers to know that the codes -- achieved thanks to decades of shareholder activism -- were not regularly put into practice in Taiwan.
"I began reading these spectacular codes of conduct and human rights policies from companies like Apple, Intel, HP and IBM. Like hundreds of other U.S. companies, they have strict policies against modern slavery, including policies against charging recruitment fees, holding workers' passports and identity documents and setting dormitory curfews.
"Yet migrants were coming to the church every day for help with those exact issues," he said.
"It left me wondering if U.S. companies sourcing from Taiwan really knew what was going on here."
Reading the codes of conduct also made Niece question how Taiwan's government responded to complaints.
"After I helped workers document their cases, I'd often accompany them to the labor office. I realized the Taiwanese government had low standards. At one hearing I raised concerns about international business standards, and the Taiwanese employer just laughed at me," Niece said.
Many of the practices proscribed by corporate codes of conduct -- retention of passports, withholding wages, restrictions on freedom of movement -- don't necessarily violate Taiwanese law, thus creating what Niece calls "a gray area" where local custom and corporate ethics collide.
Niece decided to put the codes of conduct to a test. He identified two U.S. electronic brands that were the main buyers from a factory where workers had labor complaints. He then helped the workers contact those two companies.
"The Filipina workers had previously reported their complaints to both the Ministry of Labor and the Philippines government representative in Taiwan, but nothing had changed," Niece said. "I convinced them to reach out to their factory's buyers. I was pessimistic anything would happen, but felt we should try."
Within two weeks, the two U.S. companies sent auditors to investigate and talk directly with the workers. Three months later, the illicit fee collection was suspended and dormitory policy changed. The company reimbursed over $800,000 to the nearly 300 workers.
As news of the workers' victory spread, more and more workers contacted Niece for help.
"This movement starts with the workers, who are teaching each other about their rights," he said.
In the last five years, Niece -- who has been recently named director of the Maryknoll Corporate Social Responsibility Office -- has helped workers file complaints of noncompliance with codes of conduct in over 40 factories in Taiwan, including companies that process food and make electronics, medical devices, apparel, bicycles, automotive parts and tools.
That effort has led to reimbursement of more than $6 million in recruitment fees, over 600 bank accounts returned to workers, and more than 2,000 passports and other identity documents returned to their owners.
Yet even as international buyers look closer at their suppliers and demand audits on code of conduct compliance, Taiwanese factory managers have resorted to cheating, Niece said.
"A buyer's representative will come to interview workers, but the workers are sometimes given a script to read by their employer. And if they don't know how to answer the question, they're to respond, 'The company where I work follows the labor law.'"
Niece rattles off examples of audit deception.
One factory returned workers' passports to them before an audit -- only to snatch them back again afterward. Fortunately, according to Niece, some corporate auditors aren't easily fooled.
"In several cases we've helped facilitate off-site interviews between workers and corporate investigators, including at local convenience stores and the Tanzi Catholic Church. We've had corporate auditors come to the Maryknoll House in Taichung," he said. "These for-profit multinational corporations are reaching out to the church because we've built a genuine relationship with the migrant worker community."
Niece believes that long-term solutions to workplace abuse and worker mistreatment will only come as workers are empowered to speak up for themselves.
"Our role is behind the scenes, educating workers and helping them get connected. ... Workers need to know what's happening throughout the process and be confident of their ability to effect change," he said.
Father Tajonera said even a single worker can spur change. He cites a text he received from a Filipina worker who was a liturgy volunteer in the Tanzi church.
"She sent me pictures of a new dorm. The beds were holes in the wall, like tombs they had to crawl into either head first or feet first, with no place to store their belongings. It was maybe acceptable for a few hours, but not a space you can live in for three years," Father Tajonera said. "Those were the spaces for the foreign migrant workers, but the same dorm had rooms for Taiwanese workers that were much nicer."
After social media protests and worker activism, the building owner agreed to remodel the bedrooms, and the dormitory opened after a delay of more than a year.
"After more than 20 years of working in Taiwan with the migrants, we're no longer crying out in the wilderness with no one listening. The government and the companies do listen," Father Tajonera said. "But we have to continually push the envelope because they'll inevitably try to go around us," he added.
- - -
Paul Jeffrey, a U.S.-based photojournalist who works around the world with church-sponsored relief agencies, writes for Maryknoll Magazine and other publications. This story was originally published by Maryknoll Magazine, the flagship publication of Maryknoll, and is distributed through a partnership with OSV News.
