After years of difficult campaign and litigation, former RCA workers in Taiwan started to win their lawsuit against the company and its foreign parent companies for the death, disease, and mental distress caused by workplace exposure to toxic chemicals. From the 2015 District Court judgment to the 2022 Supreme Court judgment, the plaintiffs won every legal principle they had set out to contest since they first organized in 1998, especially those regarding how the court of law uses scientific evidence. STSers in Taiwan had been intensively working with the plaintiffs, lawyers, organizers, and other volunteers in this, the most science-intensive lawsuit in Taiwan’s legal history. A broad and sustained coalition of volunteers in support of the RCA workers not only succeeded in the lawsuit but also created multiple outreaches, from STS scholarships to TV programs. This field report recounts the experience of the Taiwan STS community in its adoption of the RCA case as a community affair and its connecting with various actors in the process.
In my 2011 “Field Report” in East Asian Science, Technology and Society, I introduced the struggle of former workers against Radio Corporation of America (RCA), one of the leading high-tech electronic companies of its time, and its parent companies. I described how the struggle had culminated in the first and largest collective toxic tort lawsuit in Taiwan to date, and how the STS community, along with a wide coalition of volunteers from various professional backgrounds, had mobilized in support of the workers (H. -H Chen Citation2011a). Twelve years later the lawsuit is slowly winding down, pending some key issues in court, but the first tranche of compensation awarded has already become the largest ever sum won by plaintiffs in any occupational disease, pollution, or other toxic tort case in the country. Those workers have suffered from cancer and other serious illnesses resulting from workplace exposure while employed by Radio Corporation of America during its operations in Taiwan between 1969 and 1992.
