Taiwan Today

Heavy machinery operators are mainly men. However, Hung Jia-wen, a 36-year-old female from Taipei County, is one of few women who drive a forklift. She was introduced to the line of work by her husband Lin Jian-cheng. Forklifts are one of the most commonly seen pieces of heavy machinery used to stack things up; they can be used with various goods that are placed on pallets, stacking and balancing things. If chains and hooks are added, the forklift can become a suspension machine. Forklifts are commonly used throughout all trades to move goods. Hung is skillful at operating the machine whether it is unloading boxes of fruits and vegetables from trucks, picking up and moving automobiles parked along roads when repair work needs to be carried out, moving installation art works to specific sites, or loading or unloading construction materials in the middle of the night. Hung has even designed and developed various tools used in tandem with the forklift to move all sorts of goods in all types of sites. She and her husband have produced clips to pick up automobile lathes, clips used for pallets, hooks for pallets, and loading slider rollers (which are commonly referred to as roller skates). These designs have ultimately helped them deal with onerous jobs with ease, while avoiding any reduction in either precision or safety. Hung Jia-wen and her husband take extra special care whenever they load, unload or move precision industrial machinery, knowing that even a minor collision or unwittingly breaking off a small part of the machinery can lead to damages in the tens of millions of NT dollars. They cite instances in which forklift operators were unable to pay for the damages they made and ended up absconding from the situation. Forklift operators are usually paid on an hourly basis. The basic hourly wage starts at between NT$500 and NT$1,000. For every basement level that needs to be tackled, the hourly price goes up by NT$200. The type, size and weight of the cargo all affect the fees. At the end of the day, Hung says, the job is definitely not as easy as it seems. "We work the entire year. Holidays for other people are not necessarily holidays for us. We work in the wind and the rain, and we are on call 24 hours a day; some jobs take a long time," she says. She says that when there was so much work over a decade ago, it was not uncommon for them to work from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., and still not be able to complete all the work. But business has gradually gone downhill in the past four or five years as many companies and factories moved their operations to mainland China or Southeast Asia. "It is now a good day for us if we have two or three jobs," she says. The highest incidence of accidents involving forklifts comes from three industries, namely manufacturing, transportation/warehousing/communication, and construction, according to Council for Labor Affairs statistics. People colliding with forklifts, people falling off of forklifts, goods being moved falling onto the forklift, forklifts tipping over, and people being pinned under forklifts are the most commonly seen accidents, killing about 10 laborers each year. Forklift operation involves a high level of technical difficulties and a certain degree of danger. The government has set regulations requiring that operators of the machinery first attend technical training courses and then undergo internships and tests. Only licensed personnel are allowed to operate a forklift.