Taiwan textile labor watchdog warns of forced-labor risks in supply chains

Taiwan’s labor inspection system was too weak to spot or fix forced-labor risks in textile mills, and that failure moved the Control Yuan to call for a separate complaint-and-remedy channel outside the factories themselves. In June 2026, Control Yuan members Chi Hui-jung and Wang Yu-ling pressed for zero-fee recruitment and a third-party grievance system with real remedies, including financial compensation.

The finding lands hard for a sector that powers a lot of the sleek, technical fabric behind outdoor gear and sportswear. Taiwan is a major production base for those textiles, which means the problem is not abstract: if mills can hide recruitment debt, overtime abuse, or document retention from inspectors, global brands can be carrying risk through their supply chains without seeing it on the surface.

The pressure on Taipei was already building. In October 2025, the Control Yuan asked for an investigation into the government’s response to the textile abuse allegations after Transparentem surfaced evidence of severe labor violations at nine Taiwanese suppliers. Transparentem said it interviewed more than 90 migrant workers from Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand in 2022 and 2023, then alerted more than 40 companies in February 2024 about the suppliers, which it said were tied to more than 40 buyers.

Transparentem’s full report, Following the Thread: Labor Abuses in Taiwan’s Textile Industry, came out in February 2025 and described indicators of forced labor that read like the worst kind of supply-chain rot: high recruitment fees, excessive overtime, retention of identity documents, intimidation, and abusive living and working conditions. The NGO argued that abuses beyond tier one will keep slipping through unless buyers take responsibility deeper in the chain, where the fabric is actually made and the labor pressure gets buried.

The policy response has started to take shape. AAFA and the Fair Labor Association said they were launching a coalition with the Taiwan Textile Federation to improve conditions for migrant workers, and more than 50 brands signed a letter urging Taiwan’s government to enact legal reforms. Their first working-group meeting was scheduled for March 2025, a sign that brands were already being pushed past polite statements and into operational fixes.

For brands, the Control Yuan’s move changes the sourcing question from “Can we audit this mill?” to “Can this system actually surface abuse and fix it?” That means tighter traceability, hard checks on recruitment practices, and remediation that reaches workers with cash in hand, not just another compliance memo.