Workplace reviews and discussion: 上立紙品印刷股份有限公司

Lunch is served family-style, and leftovers can be packed up to take home for dinner. Free boxed meals are provided for overtime, and overtime pay is given. The salary is extremely low.

As a plant affairs assistant, during peak periods, working from 8 a.m. to after 7 p.m. every day was the bare minimum. Sometimes I had to work until 9 p.m.; from personal experience, I worked more than 50 hours of overtime in one month. As a graphic designer, during peak periods, I would still receive private Line messages about work matters at 10 p.m. or midnight, and there were months when I worked up to 80 hours of overtime.

As a printing technician, during peak periods, I worked from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Excessive overtime was routinely expected every week.

The company was investigated by government agencies responsible for foreign workers, who said it was employing illegal foreign workers. In fact, internal employees, dissatisfied with the company’s exploitative conditions, anonymously reported it in an attempt to draw the attention of the relevant government agencies. Although no illegal foreign workers were employed, foreign workers worked around 16 hours a day almost every day.

This traditional printing industry involves exploitative overtime. The year-end bonus is basically one month’s salary, with few other bonuses. If you are willing to work yourself to the bone and earn overtime pay, there are certainly opportunities. At the very least, monthly overtime pay can exceed NT$3,000, NT$5,000, or NT$6,000—if you are willing to stay, there is no problem.

The prerequisite is being able to withstand the mental and physical stress. Otherwise, the owner and the owner’s wife will only complain, saying, “If you don’t work overtime, there’s no one to do all this work for me—what am I supposed to do?” They will not consider what to do when employees’ mental and physical stress has already made them ill.