Minister of labor resigns

By Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

Former minister of labor Pan Shih-wei is pictured in an undated photograph.

Photo: CNA

Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) approved Minister of Labor Pan Shih-wei’s (潘世偉) resignation last night, hours after Pan offered to step down during an early-morning telephone call to Jiang amid rumors of an extramarital affair.

Executive Yuan spokesperson Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) said Jiang spoke again by phone to Pan in the afternoon and approved his resignation in the evening.

Deputy Minister of Labor Hau Feng-ming (郝鳳鳴) will take over for Pan until a new minister is appointed, Sun said.

Pan’s resignation came just a day after Next Magazine reported that he had made three nighttime visits to his female secretary in a week earlier this month.

In its latest issue, the Chinese-language magazine said Pan had also taken his secretary on official foreign visits with business-class airline tickets that had been paid for with government funds.

Pan had been quick on Wednesday to refute the accusation of an affair, while his secretary issued a statement saying she would take legal action against the magazine.

Yesterday afternoon it appeared to be business as usual for the 58-year-old Pan, who had served as head of the Council of Labor Affairs since October 2012 and oversaw its transformation into the ministry earlier this year.

The ministry yesterday made public a recording made by Pan’s wife, who is on a vacation in France with their son, in which she said she was surprised to hear of his resignation and that she fully trusts him.

“[Pan] always tells me where he goes and I know about his meetings with the secretary. I know [her] personally as well,” his wife said.

The National Alliance for Workers of Closed Factories (全國關廠工人連線), who had demanded that Pan step down over his handling of several cases concerning the exploitation of workers and what it says are deteriorating working conditions, criticized Pan’s decision.

“Politicians are supposed to step down for bad policies,” not for their deeds in the private sphere, the group said in a Facebook post.

Pan is the second public official to resign over an alleged affair exposed by Next Magazine in the past three months. It published a story about former minister without portfolio Chen Shi-shuenn (陳希舜) in April that claimed the married Chen had made several visits to a female professor’s residence in 10 days.

Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan and CNA

EDITORIAL: Mom-and-pop shops versus 7-Eleven

Taiwan has one of the world’s highest densities of convenience stores. These stores can be found at almost every street corner, and it was therefore completely unexpected that the planned entry of the 7-Eleven chain to Orchid Island would set off a war of words.

Writer Liu Ka-shiang (劉克襄), entertainer Chris Wang (宥勝) and former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) have all expressed worries over the possibility that Taiwan’s last piece of pristine, convenience store-free land might disappear.

Liu has even expressed concern that the introduction of 7-Eleven would be the second disaster after nuclear waste was brought from Taiwan to Orchid Island.

The introduction of convenience stores to Taiwan proper more than two decades ago also set off a war of words. Hsieh, a legislator at the time, pleaded for the traditional mom-and-pop stores. He worried that they would be forced to close as chain stores with a lot of capital, marketing savvy and low procurement costs entered local communities.

There were also worries that this would lead to unemployment among older people, and that these mom-and-pop stores, which functioned as the heart of these communities, would disappear, and change the face of the local economy as well as these communities.

None of these concerns were enough to stop the march of the chain convenience stores. With the introduction of a chain store, one owner could replace thousands of grocery store owners, while tens of thousands of job opportunities were replaced by temporary workers on hourly pay.

The traditional community centers of information exchange, a neighborhood watch, social and friendly exchanges and emergency aid were replaced by formal transactions and exchanges.

When 7-Eleven enters Orchid Island, not only will the traditional mom-and-pop stores disappear, but so will central lifestyle values and the culture and language of the Tao people.

Many people may feel dismay at this, but time moves on and it is difficult to turn the tide. The conflict between the emotional attachment to traditional stores and the wish for convenience has already been decided: There are convenience stores everywhere, and the only places with room left for traditional stores are in remote areas.

7-Eleven is not an unstoppable beast, nor is it necessary to vilify it. The choice between convenience stores and mom-and-pop stores is not a moral choice; it is a lifestyle choice.

Whether Orchid Island will see its first convenience store will be decided by Uni-President Enterprises Corp, and whether it will be able to survive will be decided by the residents of Orchid Island. Any other opinion is only for reference.

However, the cost of operating convenience stores on the outlying islands is higher than in other places, and only one such store will be established on Orchid Island. Perhaps the same approach as in the rest of Taiwan — aimed at an all-pervasive presence — will not be applied here, so that the traditional stores might not be forced to close.

As 7-Eleven, with its strong marketing culture, enters Orchid Island, in addition to catering to the needs of tourists, perhaps the company should consider how to integrate with the Tao culture and lifestyle to minimize its impact on local culture.

Taiwan Labor Table 2.3

Notice how in South Korea, the high number of work days lost because of  labor disputes decreased because of oppressive government policies, but in Taiwan, there were consistently hardly any labor disputes or work days lost.

Anarcho-Syndicalism History and Prospective (in Mandarin) 1/2-18

Activist guilty in Miaoli shoe toss

By Loa Iok-sin  /  Staff reporter

Lawyers present a giant shoe to student movement leader Chen Wei-ting, left, in Miaoli County yesterday after he was found guilty and fined for throwing a shoe at Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung during a protest last year.

Photo: Chang Hsun-teng, Taipei Times

Student activist Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) was found guilty yesterday of tossing a shoe at Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) in a protest last year and fined NT$10,000 (US$333) by the Miaoli District Court.

In September last year during a protest against Liu over the county government’s seizure and demolition of private homes in Dapu District (大埔), Chen tossed a shoe at Liu as he tried to stop the commissioner from entering the venue of a memorial service for Chang Sen-wen (張森文).

Chang’s home had been torn down by the county government. He was found dead in an irrigation channel a month after the forced demolition. It remains unclear whether Chang was murdered or committed suicide.

“I don’t think it’s a fair ruling, because Chen tossed the shoe at Liu to stop him from entering the venue for the memorial service, after Chang’s family stated clearly that Liu was not welcome, but he ignored it and still tried to go inside,” Lee Huan-yi (李宣毅), the attorney representing Chen in court, said outside the courthouse immediately following the verdict. “It was actually Liu who tried to force entry into a private home and interrupt a memorial service first; we therefore consider what Chen did as self-defense under the authorization of Chang’s family.”

“We regret that the judge was not convinced, and we will certainly appeal,” Lee added.

According to the written verdict, shoes are generally considered “unclean,” and therefore it would be a humiliation that causes harm to Liu’s dignity to get hit in the face by a shoe thrown by someone.

Chang’s widow, Peng Hsiu-chun (彭秀春), also showed up at the press conference to support Chen and the other activists.

“We never invited Liu to the memorial service and rejected his request to come to pay respects to my husband. We were actually quite upset when he tried to force his way into the building, escorted by the police,” Peng said. “If he didn’t insist, then nothing would have happened.”

In another case, the court acquitted Chen and six others who were said to be involved in an egg-throwing demonstration outside the Miaoli County Hall in August last year.

The court acquitted the seven defendants of humiliating a government office and violation of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) for a rally outside the county hall that ended with the crowd throwing more than 3,000 eggs at the county hall building, while wounding three police officers.

The court said the egg-throwing occurred after 10pm, when the county hall was already empty, and therefore it caused no humiliation to any county officials.

It added that, since the rally ended peacefully soon afterward, it did not constitute a violation of the Assembly and Parade Act.

Ministry of Labor to Expand Labor Inspections to Protect Workers’ Rights and Promote Workers’ Welfare

Ministry of Labor to Expand Labor Inspections to Protect Workers’ Rights and Promote Workers’ Welfare

News From：Department of Planning

Date：2014-05-02

In response to worker rights in Taiwan reported in the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013 from the US Department of State, the Ministry of Labor states: 　To ensure workers the rights to organize, increase the willingness of labor and management to negotiate and establish a diversified labor-management dispute settlement mechanism, three major labor laws in Taiwan, namely the Labor Union Act, the Collective Agreement Act and the Act for Settlement of Labor-Management Disputes were amended and went into effect on May 1, 2011. Through implementation of these three laws and other related regulations set forth in international conventions, the protection of workers’ rights to organize is furthered. In addition to relaxing restrictions on workers’ right of organize, including allowing teachers to form and join unions, the Ministry of Labor also removed restrictions placed on the nationality of union members, thus allowing foreign workers to organize and join unions and participate in union activities. By having independent operation, labor unions can operate autonomously to achieve sustainable development and enhance their solidarity. At present, there are 5,285 labor unions in Taiwan, totaling to 3,362,024 members and a union density of 34.3%.     　To safeguard the right to bargaining, the Collective Agreement Act was reviewed and provisions on obligatory negotiation and negotiation in good faith were incorporated to assist labor and management in establishing effective collective agreements. Also, the adjudication mechanism prescribed in the Act for Settlement of Labor-Management Disputes encourages self-initiated labor-management negotiation and maintenance of labor and management autonomy. Statistics show that the enterprises re-signing collective agreements and signing collective agreements for the first time in 2011, 2012 and 2013 increased by 56%, 28% and 23%, respectively, indicating the positive improvement in development of collective labor-management relations. Furthermore, to help eliminate unfair labor practices and restore labor-management relations, the Ministry of Labor established an unfair labor practice adjudication mechanism and recruited specialists familiar with labor laws and labor-management relations to form the Unfair Labor Practice Adjudication Commission. The Commission is responsible for reviewing unfair labor practices and protecting the rights of workers to organize unions and participate in union activities, signing collective agreements with employers and monitoring collectively against unfair labor practices.   　It is clearly stipulated in the Labor Standards Act that no employer shall, by force, coercion, detention, or other illegal means, compel a worker to perform work.  This is in line with international development of human rights protection. All workers (including employees of managerial levels, caretakers and security guards) employed in business entities of professions to which the Labor Standards Act applies are protected by the Act. To broaden the scope of protection, lawyers hired in the legal service industry and farmers are now also included in the Labor Standards Act respectively on April 1, 2014 and January 1 2015. The Ministry of Labor is reviewing the possibility of applying the Labor Standards Act to workers in professions not yet included.   　Though there are criticisms on workers not receiving overtime pay, such statements are not accurate. By law, Article 24 of the Labor Standards Act stipulates how overtime pay is to be calculated. Statistically, of the 7,137,983 people employed in various industries in 2013, 3% of the average monthly wage of NT$45,664was overtime pay; regulations on overtime pay also apply to foreign workers. Allegations on domestic workers received less than NT$1,000 a month is also untrue. According to the 2013 Foreign Worker Employment and Management Survey report, the average wage of foreign domestic caretakers (including overtime pay) was NT$18,425. To ensure that foreign domestic caretakers receive full wages, Article 43 of the Regulations on the Permission and Administration of the Employment of Foreign Workers specifies that other than the National Insurance Premium, Labor Insurance Premium, income tax and other amounts to be withheld according to law, employers must pay foreign workers their wages in full. The Ministry of Labor enforces the regulations to make sure foreign domestic caretakers get their full wages and fines any employers who violate the regulations with a penalty of NT$60,000 to NT$300,000.  　Overtime work and payment of wages are among the key labor investigations carried out by the Ministry of Labor to ensure businesses entities and individuals abide to the Labor Standards Act and related regulations. Inspections aside, education, awareness, and guidance are also given targeting specific professions. Complaints filed by workers are redirected to labor inspection agencies for immediate inspection . When violations of labor regulations are found, the Ministry of Labor imposes penalty on the violator and demands corrections. In 2013 alone, the Ministry of Labor conducted 12 different types of working condition inspections and inspected various factories 762 times. Fines up to NT$300,000 are imposed on businesses confirmed to having violated working condition regulations. As a result, working condition violation dropped to 26.2% in 2013, with a correction rate of nearly 10%. This year (2014), the Ministry of Labor will expand its working condition inspections with a focus on wages and working hours 　Continuous labor inspection is a primary goal of the Ministry of Labor. Another misconception is that the ratio of labor inspectors in Taiwan being 0.27 per hundred thousand workers, far below the international standard of 1.5 per hundred thousand workers. The Ministry of Labor clarifies that there were 10.86 million workers and 294 labor inspectors (now already increased to 384) in Taiwan during the first half of 2013. This equates to 2.7 inspectors per hundred thousand workers, far above the international standard.. There are plans to increase the number of labor inspectors further in two stages. By 2015, Taiwan will have a labor inspector-worker ratio of 1:15,000, which is the standard the ILO recommends for industrialized nations.   　The rights and interests of domestic workers are also a top priority of the Ministry of Labor. The draft Domestic Worker Protection Act regulates that wages of domestic workers “may not be lower than the minimum monthly wage announced by the central competent authority.” The Act also stipulates termination of labor contract, payment of wages, working hours, rest time, special leave and request for leave, insurance and filing of complaints. Currently, the draft is at the Executive Yuan for review. Before the legislative procedure is completed, the Ministry of Labor will work out other feasible administrative measures to safeguard the rights and interests of domestic workers.    　The rights and interests of foreign workers are protected with established regulations and measures as well. In Taiwan, employers are required to inform the local governments within three days after their foreign workers enter the country. This is done so that foreign worker inspectors can visit foreign workers to check on their living conditions and living quarters and to see whether employers are paying full wages accordingly. The Ministry of Labor also makes extensive announcements via public media to remind employers to pay foreign workers their wages in full and not to make any unjustified deductions. Foreign workers may also call the Ministry of Labor’s 1955 Hotline to seek counseling or file their complaints if their employers fail to pay them for work performed on holidays or violate other regulations. Depending on the seriousness of the violation, the Ministry of Labor can order such employers to pay the wages within a given period or impose a fine of NT$60,000 to NT$300,000. The Ministry may also partially or completely revoke their permits to recruit and hire foreign workers.  　　 　The Labor Standards Act also regulates foreign workers’ food and lodging expensive in that workers and employers may negotiate to determine wages and specify in the labor contract that such expenses are to be paid with a part of the wage. This regulation is applicable to both local and foreign workers employed in professions to which the Labor Standards Act applies. However, since foreign domestic workers are not covered by the Labor Standards Act, and since their workplace and place of living being the same place, the Ministry of Labor regards it inappropriate to deduct food and lodging expenses from their wages. At present, food expenses of foreign domestic workers are mostly paid by their employers.   　　 　The Ministry of Labor would like to reassert that the Republic of China, Taiwan has been making every possible effort to protect the rights of foreign workers and will continue to do so by equally applying labor protection regulations and measures in the country. At the moment, Taiwan is actively promoting economic development and transforming industrial structures to upgrade the business competitiveness and encourage enterprises to adjust wages for their employees. The Ministry of Labor will act accordingly and continue to enforce various labor policies, improve the bargaining capacity of labor unions and enhance the skills of workers to boost their employability. This year, the Ministry of Labor will launch a “Work-life Balance” program to promote gradual work hour reduction and better working conditions.

Taiwan Labor Tables 2-1 2-2

Wealth gap a global ill: Jan Hung-tze

By Tsai Shu-yuan and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

The imbalanced distribution of wealth is a global problem that engenders a feeling of deprivation among the world’s poor, and, despite events such as the Sunflower movement, the rich are still not paying attention to those beneath them on the socioeconomic scale, PChome Online chairman Jan Hung-tze (詹宏志) said over the weekend.

The sense of loss accompanying the widening gap between rich and poor has caused many young people worldwide to feel incapable of bettering themselves under current conditions and is becoming increasingly widespread, Jan said on Saturday at a conference in Greater Taichung that was part of a series of national economic conferences hosted by the National Development Council and the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Government policies can do more to eliminate this wealth gap, Jan said, adding that: “The primary task of a government is to devise policies that will help give graduates a better chance to make something of themselves.”

Jan said the younger generation and the poor do not have a say in which economic direction the nation heads in, so the government should find ways to gather more opinions and views from these sectors of society.

This problem is not only a national one, it is an increasingly global issue, Jan said, pointing to the anti-inequality Occupy Wall Street movement that started in the US in 2011 and spread across the world, as well as this year’s student-led Sunflower movement against the government’s handling of the cross-strait service trade agreement, in which protesters seized the main chamber of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei from March 18 to April 10.

Citing remarks former US secretary of the treasury Timothy Geithner made in an interview in May, Jan said Geithner described 1 percent of the world as having everything, leaving the remaining 99 percent with nothing, an imbalance of social wealth Jan said has made an entire generation feel deprived.

According to Jan, Geithner also said that the US is still plagued by poverty and salaries have not risen there in a long time.

The PCHome head said the issue is not that there are fewer poor people, but that the rich are using their wealth to hike housing and commodity prices, making it “harder for the poor to live, let alone escape their situation.”

Jan said that the problem in Taiwan is unique because the nation not only has to deal with a social wealth gap, but also China’s rise.

How can the nation compete and cooperate with Beijing when it has more than 1,000 missiles pointed at it, Jan asked.

He cited Barclays research report released a week ago titled: Hello China; Goodbye Taiwan? to reinforce the point that in terms of global information, technology and electronic products supply chains, China’s rise will slowly bump Taiwan off the chain entirely.

Taiwan has no time to prepare a “soft transition” of its industry, Jan said.