TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Foreign English teachers employed by the British Council Taiwan (BC) along with members of their union, the Taiwan Higher Education Union (THEU), held a protest on Xinyi Road in Taipei at 1 p.m. on Wednesday (June 5).

Protesters called for a pay increase, which foreign English teachers allege they have not received since BC was founded in Taiwan in 2004. Along with more pay, they are also asking for sick pay for hourly contract workers, and compensation for long-term teachers laid off without severance packages, per a THEU press release.

The protest was the result of previously reported six failed rounds of labor negotiations. which included labor dispute mediation convened by the Taipei City Labor Bureau. BC had agreed to a salary increase of 3%, though the union felt such an increase would not keep up with inflation, which in Taipei City in 2023 it said exceeded 4%.

As a consequence, foreign English teachers and their labor representatives said a vote on a strike would take place next week (June 11). Should more than half of the union members agree to a strike and management still refuse to propose a reasonable salary increase, a strike would take place at the end of June.

The upcoming vote will be the first teachers' strike vote in Taiwan's history. Teachers were given the right to unionize when the legislature passed amendments to the Union Act in June 2010, but it does not accord teachers the right to strike, which legislators said would unduly impact the right of students to receive education.

"Teachers' fight for a reasonable salary increase is not only a necessary action to achieve fairness but also provides relief from the physical and mental stress of a worker who lives in a situation where daily expenses continue to rise and provides a better environment for students who come to class,” said Wu Jing-ru (吳靜如), a researcher from the Taiwan International Labor Association.

The THEU press release claimed that over the past eight years, BC has increased tuition fees by over 35%, leading to a profit margin that exceeds more than 80% of publicly listed companies in Taiwan. It said, that despite this and a grand opening for its fourth English teaching center in Linkou, BC still refuses to adequately raise foreign teacher salaries.