Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Australians sourcing cheap labor on Chinese Web sites

Australians sourcing cheap labor on Chinese Web sites

The Guardian, Australia

Jobs offering as little as A$9 (US$7.04) an hour, well below the minimum wage, are being posted on Chinese-language Web sites in Australia.
Calls to restaurants, massage parlors and tea shops that advertised on the Web sites backpackers.com.tw and tigtag.com uncovered numerous cases of below-award wages for jobs targeting Chinese-speaking students and visitors on working holidays.
The investigation was carried out with the advocacy group Taiwanese Working Holiday Youth (TWHY).
Most of the jobs offered were with relatively small, family-owned businesses, but in one case, the man who answered said he was hiring for a Sydney branch of the Taiwanese tea shop chain Chatime. The global franchise has more than 1,000 branches, including 60 in Australia.
He said the service role based in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta paid working holidaymakers A$9 per hour for the first month and $11 per hour thereafter. Payment was to be cash in hand, but a tax file number was required.
The full-time adult award rate for a food and beverage attendant is A$17.35. Overseas visitors must be older than 18 to be on a working holiday visa in Australia.
Chatime Australia confirmed with Guardian Australia the advertisement was for a job at the company’s Paramatta store, but said as it was a franchise, the company was not involved in the hiring of employees.
“Chatime franchisees fully understand their rights and obligations to their employees. This is something that is continually communicated to them. We certainly take these accusations seriously and we will pursue the matter further with the franchisee in question,” a spokesman said via e-mail.
The Parramatta branch of Chatime did not respond to calls.
A Japanese restaurant in Melbourne offered working holidaymakers A$10 per hour. A Brisbane massage parlor offered 45 percent commission of all bookings, with no basic wage. Inexperienced staff were expected to do one week of training without pay. A contracting company advertised for a fruit-picking job in central Queensland with a piece rate of A$0.11 to A$0.14 per branch picked and no basic wage.
TWHY spokesman Li Yao-tai said working holidaymakers often did not complain to authorities about pay and conditions because they lacked confidence in their English. Along with low wages, workers also often faced long hours, poor work conditions and, in some cases, sexual harassment by their employers, Li said.
The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) was unable to comment on individual cases, but said there were nearly 1 million recently arrived visa-holders with working rights in Australia.
One in 10 requests for assistance to the FWO are now from visa-holders working in Australia, more than ever before.
“That’s significant and is a trend that is concerning us greatly,” an FWO spokeswoman said.
Industries known to employ significant numbers of overseas workers include horticulture, cleaning, convenience stores and trolley collecting. However, the largest number of requests for assistance from overseas workers, nearly one in four, come from employees in the accommodation and food services sectors.
The FWO established an overseas workers’ team in 2012. In the first nine months of the current financial year, it recouped A$1.2 million in underpayments for 345 visa-holders, surpassing last year’s figure of A$1.1 million.
The spokeswoman said it was impossible to visit every workplace in Australia to carry out checks, “and nor should we.”
The ombudsman has an interpreter service and educational material translated into 27 languages, including Chinese. A recent campaign targeted overseas workers with advertisements in Korean on Korean Web sites.
Workers from non-English speaking backgrounds have limited access to the Fair Work system and a large number of Australian employers “have turned this knowledge into a profitable business model,” said Jo Schofield, national president of United Voice Workers, the union for hospitality workers.
A report by United Voice showed extensive exploitation of international students in Melbourne’s office-cleaning industry, where some were underpaid up to A$15,000 per year. Union members have proposed “whistleblower” protections for foreign workers and the introduction of an immigration inspectorate at the FWO.

Monday, May 25, 2015

"It Won't Work" Chapter 13 Excerpt: Bruno; The Real Star Buck

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 

It was nine years later that the Labor Board said the fired Dante’s Barista should get his job back. Emerson was glad Bruno was vindicated, after all this time. He'd always been a hero to him. Bruno Ascus was not a union organizer; he was told he was one by Ryland whose dirty work he did. Emerson remembered Bruno feeling his oats after Ryland dared him to stand up to the manager. Then, after he was fired, while Ryland kept his job, Ryland used Bruno as a test law case with some connections he had. Bruno didn’t even know what NLRB stood for when Ryland filed the petition on his behalf; all Bruno did was sign the paper.
In the nine years since federal authorities decided he should get his case back, Bruno washed dishes in delicatessens, took care of elderly home bound clients for an agency, and washed floors in a rehab center. “It’s disgusting,” Emerson thought, “that after all this time, his jobs were so bad that he still wanted his Dante’s Coffee Shop job back!”
 Emerson thought of calling up Bruno. He couldn’t muster the courage. To Bruno, Ryland was a hero though he lost Bruno the best job he ever had, literally. Emerson recalls how Ryland and two other Wobbly baristas wore the IWW button at work, too, but carefully didn’t say anything to management that would be considered grounds for firing; he wasn’t ready to play that card, yet. Bruno wasn’t that discreet. 
Bruno Ascus had already moved on, married and had kids when Ryland, seeing another opportunity for union fame, brought charges on his behalf to the NLRB accusing Dante’s of unfairly abusing him for union activism. The board ruled against the coffee chain. Dante’s took its case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals the court gave the case back to the NLRB after deciding that Bruno didn’t curse the manager in front of customers; just in front of other baristas.
Two years later, the NLRB had a new decision: Bruno’s firing was illegal no matter what because Bruno’s union activism contributed to the decision to get rid of him. The NLRB pointed out that Dante’ didn’t punish other employees for cursing—including the manager—and that a memo about Bruno’s dismissal specifically said it was because Bruno supported the IWW union.
When Emerson Davinsky started feeling the need for anti-Alzheimer’s medication, he put the pen down and stopped writing his memoirs. Through all the past e-mails and flame wars, he couldn’t put on his pants without pulling up a memory.
When he saw the news on-line about Bruno Ascus, he got that feeling again. Bruno was vindicated after nine years after he was fired from Dante’s Coffee Shop in the early days of the Ry Grossinger organizing there; Grossinger had an idea, for IWW solidarity, for workers to wear buttons during work time, even though only five of the twelve workers were in the union.
Ryland had contacted the NLRB to schedule an election. Emerson and the other Wobblies in the branch felt it showed their hand without a solid majority, it got Bruno, naive as he was, into an argument with the manager and eventually fired. Before a vote could be taken to join the union, it was postponed because they knew they would lose, since Dante management packed the location with anti-union stalwarts.
The only person who benefited from the organizing was Ry Grossinger; the corporate news it generated made him slightly famous, enough to be invited to write a preface to an old IWW anthology, get hangers-on, and make use of his law credentials.
He never asked permission from the IWW GMB to start the union drive and, finally, depleted the GMB of funds by stuffing votes; only Dante workers went to vote. Ry never shared funds raised by the Dante baristas with the GMB or GHQ. He even started his own website and list-serve without approval. With the tide against Emerson and no support from friends like Jack Covert who quit the branch, he never brought Ry up on charges; he left the branch in disgust.
It was the first shot in a volley of union organizing that the New York City General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World tried to accomplish. All the organizing had ended before it took hold, like moving a broken chair before the glue had dried or trying to sit on the chair after it had been removed, so eager were Emerson’s fellow workers to outdo each other. Workers who lost their jobs because of the impatience of the advising organizers would eventually win some of their cases in court after guilt and pro-bono defense helped them get through. Colonel Crutch even donated a sum of his own money to ease his conscience and get workers their jobs back. Emerson was long gone from the branch by the time mop-up began.
Colonial Crutch moved on as Ryland moved away with his own version of the IWW. Emerson stayed true to the General Membership Branch and tried to safeguard meetings and funds for all members, not just Ryland’s gang or the Clutch-Willy faction.
In Brooklyn Crutch and Willy were joined by Fergie and Emerson and a few others at four shops that had let them help organize unions for them. Emerson was especially helpful with his Mandarin ability by ad-libbing chants outside the Chinese run businesses. For their services, all workers in two of the shops had been fired and management demanded to see proof of legal immigrant status as a way of scaring the un-fired workers into behaving.
Emerson proudly participated in the union pushes at the shops in Bushwick. One day in particular stands out in his mind as exemplary. The day began at 5:30 am in front of Great City Produce. A few workers arriving heard whistles and home-made drums. A supervisor kept the door closed an hour until the Latino manager arrived; he could speak with his own people, the Chinese bosses knew. Next, Emerson and the other Wobblies walked to the nearby Americana Market. It was there the previous year that four workers were fired for organizing. A few stayed on because they were discreet and not openly involved with the union, so the management thought.
After stopping off for breakfast, Emerson took his fellow workers in his car a few miles away to Dawn Plus Corp., formally called Rosy Supply Corp. Rosy Supply was the company that fired all its workers involved with the IWW. Wobblies from out of town in New York City at the time joined the demonstration to get the workers their back pay.
The final stop of that perfect union day was at Hung-Easy, the foodstuffs distributor that Willy the Glove and Colonial Crutch went to after one worker complained about them at Allanar El Camino. The warehouse was locked up for the holiday. Despite that, the solidarity party continued until the police came to send them away. Emerson drove his fellow workers back to the subway station and headed home fulfilled.
     Willy the Glove expressed himself satisfied with the day’s events in every way. Everyone let him believe it was his party. Emerson resented him and the way the branch was strictly divided along selfish lines of heroism by Crutch and Ryland. Despite all the hard effort, almost everyone who was being helped organizing lost their jobs. Baristas usually didn’t go to Bushwich actions and Bushwich organizers weren’t welcome at barista meetings. Only Emerson and a few other Wobblies stayed on to participate in both. Emerson knew there had to be a better way. The NYC GMB was ruining more people’s lives than they helped. Only Ryland came out smelling like Bread & Roses.

Wobbly City: May-June 2004


Wobbly City, the official monthly newsletter of the Industrial Workers of the World New York City General Membership Branch (IWW NYC GMB) was named, originated, edited, distributed, copied, and written for by David Barry Temple for three years, from January 2004 until November 2006. Each issue was approved at monthly meetings and offered as a forum for its members.taIWWan Blog is proud to present entire issues of Wobbly City for your information. This series documents the development of the IWW in New York City.



Saturday, May 23, 2015

"It Won't Work" Ch. 13 Excerpt: NYC GMB Competition for Glory:

Ryland Grossinger was bred in Forest Hills, NY but he was raised in Los Angeles. He was toasted when he graduated from UCLA in law but he baked too long in the Southern California sun when he tried to butter up to his boss and was fired. Rather than loaf around, he yearned to go back east and see what was cooking. He became a barista for Dante’s Coffee and found his place at the table. 
      While Ry had no trouble getting settled with the handsome allowance his well-to-do parents provided him, he wanted to make a mark in legal world on the side of the oppressed. Being short brought him contempt for others who looked down on him. He felt he knew what it was like to be poor, black-bred, and to have to pump a nickel whenever they forked-out salary. He was going to help the workers of the world. A working class hero was something to be. 
      He went to the IWW website and discovered there was a branch in New York City meeting on the Lower Eastside in a place called ABC No Rio. One slow Sunday afternoon, he got on the subway at Broadway-Lafayette and took the F train to Essex Street, walking over to Rivington near the Streit’s Matzo Factory. He thought he would be late, and hoped to make a grand entrance, but the meeting, scheduled for 2 pm so that some members could get over their Sunday morning hangovers, hadn't started yet. Only Emerson was there to welcome Ry with Colonial Crutch from Macon, Georgia, on the throne downstairs. 
      "Is this the IWW meeting?"
      "It sure is. Are you looking for us?"
      "I thought there'd be more of you."
      "Some of them are coming late but Colonial Crutch will be right back; he's our legal expert."
      "I'm a lawyer, too; B.A. from UCLA."
      "Oh, Californian; the sunshine state,"
      "I was born in Queens; my parents moved west when I was young."
      "I didn't notice any New York accent." Just then, Eupheus Crutch's footsteps could be heard climbing the fragile stairs and walking back, entering the dilapidated room.
      "Well, what do we have here?"
      "You must be Crutch," said Ry without standing to greet him. Already Crutch was his brother in law and a sibling rivalry was brewing."
      Crutch sat down and opened his satchel removing a booklet with the IWW Constitution and another booklet called One Big Union. "Here you are; read these when you get a chance. Y'all living in New York now?"   
      "Yes, I live on East 12th near Tompkins Square Park." Ry had been living in the ground floor studio since arriving six months earlier.
      Just then, footsteps could be heard coming up the stairs, two sets of footsteps, both heavy, like the footstep of working men. Two male voices were talking loudly as they came through and slammed the open door. 
      "Oh so sorry," said Adonis, “I didn't realize there was anyone here." 
      "Oh he did that on purpose," Mack reached out a hand. Hi, you must be that fella from California. GHQ said you might be coming in. My name is Maynard, I'm a carpenter. Call me May."
      "Yeah, some carpenter. He's a fuckin' boss, I tell you," shouted Adonis as he threw his bag to the floor and roughly took a broken seat to sit on. "He still owes me two hundred bucks."
      "Now be polite, "Adonis," said May."You'll scare Ry away. Ry it is, isn't it?"
      "It's Ryland but my friends call me Ry, Ry Grossinger."
      "You know you're famous in New York."
      "Yeah, someone told me there was a Jewish bread company with my name."
      "It's okay. The Industrial Workers of the World have no racist tendencies."
      "I'm not Jewish. My parents are Jewish."
      "Well, doesn't that make you Jewish?" said Crutch. "I read somewhere that the religion follows the mother's side in your culture."
      "I'm losing my religion," said Ry angrily.
      Just then, another member slinked into the room from the second door to the back, the one that led into a little storage area and then the kitchen. 
      "Come in Jack; don't be shy," said May. "Ry, this is our fifth member present."
      "Y'all sit down now, here? We have a quorum. Let's get started we're an hour and a half late already."
      "I can't stay past 4pm; I have an important meeting with a fellow barista."
      "Barista? What, do you work in a coffee shop?"
      "Dante’s," said Ry with disdain. "We are trying to start a union there."
      "That's great, Ry," exclaimed May. "How can we help?"
      "Help? You're a fucking boss is all! You can't even help your own crew," chimed in Adonis.
      Emerson saw that Ryland was looking in disbelief at this motley crew he had just joined. H e knew he was thinking the same thing Emerson thought when he joined his first IWW meeting: "This is a union?" 
      Ry Grossinger was on the way to becoming a working class star buck. His grind would be Dante’s Coffee, a franchise chain that had thousands of locations across the United States and around the world.
      Colonial Eupheus Crutch, the gentleman Wobbly who headed straight to New York City from Macon, Georgia, was the cosmonaut Bolshevik to Ry’s Astro Boy persona; he was in a catch-up race to the moon of Industrial Worker union stardom. All the underhanded insults Eupheus endured from minuscule Ryland would have made him a sympathetic cult hero down south, but there in New York, he was fair game for every yokel joke cosmopolitan sophistication could dish out. He held his head high throughout the confederate-baiting northerners’ rants. Did he not suggest the Stars and Bars were to be proud of as his state flag? So what if Crutch was? Crutch was ready to show that “tiny organizer with the big mouth” what organizing was all about. The south would rise again in New York City.
      He went looking for workers to be organized by him. The firebrand who got him moving was William Stacks, Willy the Glove. Willy, who bore a resemblance to Popeye, had that California look of sun-glassed indifference to what anyone but he had to say. He knew Ryland Grossinger’s kind; he’d dealt with them before, the bosses from the other side. Now, in his 50’s, unmarried, getting wrinkled, a drifter with a cowboy hat, Willy had more tricks than sleeves to hide. He wore a right-handed gray felt construction worker’s glove with railroad stripe wrist band like the Phantom of the Opera wore his mask; he never took it off except, maybe, to sleep.
Willy Stacks, who claimed to be Cesar Chavez’s gloved left hand in the struggle of the California grape growers United Farm Workers at Delano, was raring for a fight to bring back the glory. Colonial Crutch had his wishes fulfilled. Emerson, as the treasurer of the New York City branch had the task of raising funds depleted by the Dante Barista Union (as Ryland called his offshoot) and holding down the fort for Wobblies with other pet struggles to finance. Emerson went out with Willy and Crutch on hunches. He was Crutch’s hum-dinger; the cat’s meow. He was the only man more macho than Crutch.
      Willy the Glove had an insider’s tip that there were some workers in a processing plant in Long Island City that were pissed off about their low wages and heavy work schedule. Willy himself had worked there for a while driving a refrigerated delivery truck. The company, Farm Freshness, had a two hundred thousand square-foot warehouse with hundreds of employees, mostly immigrant workers and ex-cons that collected and boxed shopping lists of groceries for deliveries to customers. They were like a supermarket on wheels.
      “Hundreds of workers who are ready to organize; I feel it in my bones. Enough shit from their supervisors,” said Willy pointing his glove finger in the direction of the plant, three miles uptown across the East River from the IWW meeting place off Essex Street. “They’re ready to pop!” 
     “They need to meet with us somehow without letting their supervisors see,” said Crutch, the canon wheels turning. “We must let them, know we can steer them right; they can trust us.” Crutch stood, arms folded across his chest, mustache drooping down his seriously red face.
      “How many copies do you want?” questioned Emerson picking up a thread from earlier in the meeting, before Ryland and four other baristas came to make their motion and move on to their own meeting place. “You said they have how many workers?”
      “We need bilingual flyers; Spanish on one side, English on the other.”
      “Ask Ernie in Bushwich if he could do it.” Ernie Poncho was the Wobbly who worked with a Latino group from the barrio there in an organization called “Allanar El Camino,” Pave the Way.
      “Let’s get, I don’t know, two hundred printed,” said Willy, matter-of-factly.
      “That many? Okay, on thin paper. They’re going to throw them away.”
      “No. They must be top quality! Don’t let them think we’re a cheap organization.” Crutch shook his head slowly in agreement, his eyes shut under raised brows, lips enclosing down-pointed whiskers.
      “But we are cheap; we only have four hundred dollars left in the treasury,” said Emerson pleadingly.
      “We may need more,” said Willy, tapping the rim of his Mexican Stetson an inch from the left uncovered hand of the arm leaning on the radiator. “Can’t tell; the lady workers on the line have boyfriends.” Billy went on,” They need some confidence, too. We can give it to them. You know, ex-cons need a push; they’re a little shy about losing this job, one of the only places that’ll hire them.”
      In the weeks before, Willy and his de facto spokesman, Crutch, had unleashed their organizing abilities on the fine workers of Farm Freshness. They’d made a motion and had gotten three hundred dollars from the branch to reserve breakfast in a little luncheonette outside the plant; no refund. The breakfast would be “chin-wag,” as the Colonial called it, “a chinwag for the scissor-bills.” Before Crutch and Willy the Glove had set their sights on the Farm Freshness workers, he had Emerson and another Wob named Fergie visiting junk yards in Greenpoint. The barking dogs at each job site in and around painfully drab and weed wild corrugated metal fences were omens. On the dead end summer streets of industrial Greenpoint, there was no sense trying to get passed the gates, but that didn’t deter Willy the Glove or Colonial Crutch who followed close by at Willy’s new Red Wing construction-booted heels. Emerson and Fergie shied the other way. Beyond the crumpled gates backed into by trucks too many times stood two or three men in short-sleeved shirts and jeans, looking outward and scratching their heads at the four men milling around in the usually vacant street.
      Willy bravely took a chance. The other Wobblies looked as he strutted past the gate, black chained pit bulls barking madly, to speak with the workers awaiting him. No, they weren’t workers. The workers, he was told, were on their break and he’d better stay away and not bother them.
      “Yes sir, just asking,” said Willy looking skyward under his Ray-Bans, the dog pulling at its chain.
      “”They’re supervisors,” he nonchalantly said passing the other three Wobblies out of sight up the broken blazing street. “How was I to know?” said the veteran of many a California grape grower strike.
      “Let’s get out of here; this is stupid,” said Emerson, stating the obvious. “Holy shit,” chimed in Fergie. “If this wasn’t the biggest waste of time! Willy? There are no workers here to organize!”
      “I say there are!” said Willy emphatically.
      “He said there are then there most certainly are,” added Crutch confidently. “Where y’all going to now, Willy?”
      “Back to the Chinese warehouse in Bushwick.”
“Damn if I’m going there I’d rather be in bed with a bitch,” said Fergie. ”I’m heading home to Brooklyn. Where’s the ‘L’ Train?” Fergie was off and so was Emerson. They’d had enough organizing for the day. It seemed pretty disorganized to them. Who was this Willy the Glove, anyway? How did he show up at the IWW meeting and who let him in?
“Let’s go see if Ernie is at Allanar El Camino; it’s just ten minutes from here,” said Willy as he walked down the street to his battered Land Rover with Crutch and drove off dropping off Emerson and Fergie at the subway station a few blocks away.

      “They’ll need some Red Cards for sure, I do believe,” said Crutch. 

Unemployment in Taiwan fell to 3.63% last month

Unemployment fell to 3.63% last month

LAGGING BEHIND:

The statistics agency said that unemployment data have yet to reflect the current economic slowdown indicated by recent data on exports

By Crystal Hsu  /  Staff reporter
The nation’s unemployment rate dropped to 3.63 percent last month, the lowest in 15 years for April, as companies increased headcounts and people dissatisfied with earlier jobs rejoined the labor force after receiving their lunar year-end bonuses, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The latest jobless figure marked a 0.28 percentage point decline from a year earlier and a 0.09 percentage point decline from March, the DGBAS said in a report, adding that unemployment after seasonal adjustments stood unchanged at 3.75 percent.
“A lagging economic indicator, the jobless rate has yet to reflect an ongoing economic slowdown indicated by disappointing export data,” DGBAS Deputy Director Lo Yi-ling (羅怡玲) said.
In addition, domestic demand — namely, private consumption and investment — is expected to underpin GDP growth this year, thanks to energy cost savings from cheaper oil prices, the statistics agency said.
The jobless rate might drop further this month from April, and edge up between next month and August due to an expected increase of first-time and part-time jobseekers over the summer vacation, Lo said.
The number of unemployed was 421,000 last month, down by 10,000 from a month earlier, the report said.
The number of people who quit their jobs increased by 4,000 last month, while people who lost their jobs due to business closures or seasonal factors increased by 2,000, the report said.
First-time job seekers also decreased by 2,000 last month.
By education breakdown, unemployment was highest among people with a university degree or higher at 4.54 percent, followed by college graduates at 3.91 percent and high-school graduates at 3.79 percent, the report said.
The 15-to-24 age group had the highest unemployment rate at 11.48 percent, compared with 3.83 percent for the 25-to-44 group and 1.9 percent for the 45-to-64 bracket, the report said.
Well-educated young job seekers continue to top the jobless population despite a record high of job openings listed on online job banks.
Online recruitment agency 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said the number of job openings on its Web site reached a record high of 650,000 and many employers would allow college graduate candidates to start working in July.
The job bank advised would-be job seekers to take action now rather than one month later, when competition is set to intensify.
Regular monthly wages averaged NT$38,522 in March, up 1.51 percent from a year earlier, the DGBAS said in a separate report.
Non-regular monthly wages averaged NT$43,016 in March, an increase of 0.72 percent from a year earlier, the report said.
In the first quarter, take-home wages gained 1.58 percent year-on-year to NT$38,406, a record high, the DGBAS said, adding that the figures would mark a 2.19 percent gain after adjustment for deflation.

Friday, May 22, 2015

China Airlines laundry union demands wage hike

China Airlines laundry union demands wage hike

By Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter

Members of the China Pacific Laundry Services Workers’ Union protest outside the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in Taipei yesterday morning, demanding that their base salary be raised to NT$28,000 per month.

Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times

The China Pacific Laundry Services Workers’ Union yesterday morning protested outside the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, demanding a raise in base salary to NT$28,000 a month.
China Pacific Laundry Services Ltd is a joint venture between Swire Pacific and China Airlines (CAL), with the latter owning 55 percent of the company’s shares. Its facility at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport cleans uniforms for CAL flight attendants, as well as the blankets, seat covers and dining towels on the flights. The company’s chairman is also appointed by CAL.
The union said that the company has been telling the public that it had financial losses for 12 years before it was formally established. It added that the company also said that workers’ base salary was NT$20,273 a month, which exceeds the minimum wage set in the Labor Standards Act (勞基法).
“The truth is that the company had losses for only five years. The company said that an employee’s base salary includes various subsidies and performance bonuses, but these funds are excluded from the base of calculation for overtime pay, year-end bonuses and salary increases,” the union said in a statement, adding that the company was fined by the Taoyuan Department of Labor for these violations.
Union chairman Shen Chen-hsiung (沈振雄) said that the company, in a letter to its employees, even threatened to outsource the company’s services to contractors or lay off its employees if the union did not comply with the company’s policy, showing that it has absolutely no interest in resolving the dispute. He also said that the monthly salary for new employees was less than NT$20,000, which includes the base salary of NT$15,500 and NT$2,000 bonus for full attendance. Employees can only earn additional pay by working overtime.
“This should not be how a profitable company treats its employees,” he said.
The union also said that the ministry owns more than 50 percent of CAL and appoints officials at the airline. It said that what is happening to workers at China Pacific Laundry Services reflects badly on the ministry, which might be perceived as an agency that would lower wages for the sake of company profits.
In response, the ministry said that it would relay the appeal of the workers to both the minister of transportation and communications and deputy ministers, as well as executives at the airline.
It is the ministry’s hope that both the company and the union can reach a compromise within the law at a settlement meeting in Taoyuan on Monday, the labor department said.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Ministry of Labor mulls increasing cash rewards

Ministry of Labor mulls increasing cash rewards

Staff writer, with CNA

Fri, May 22, 2015 - Page 5

The Ministry of Labor said it is mulling an increase in the cash reward it gives for reporting the illegal hiring of migrant workers, while emphasizing that foreign workers should be hired through legal channels.
At present, people who report illegal employers or brokerage firms, or foreign workers on the run, using the toll-free hotline 0800-000978 receive a reward of up to NT$50,000 per case.
The ministry is also contemplating other revisions to the Employment Services Act (就業服務法) that would include increased fines for illegally harboring or hiring foreign workers.
Employers are currently subject to fines of between NT$150,000 and NT$750,000 for illegally hiring migrant workers.
The ministry did not indicate how high the revised reward and fines would go, but said the drafted revisions would be submitted to the legislature on July 11 for review.
The proposals came after an incident in which an Indonesian worker allegedly stabbed her former employer to death in Hsinchu for allegedly owing her back salary.
The Indonesian worker was found to have traveled to Taiwan legally to work as a family caregiver, but her employer reported her missing last year.
Domestic employers were urged by the ministry on Wednesday not to deal with illegal brokerage firms or hire illegal foreign workers.
Foreign workers who have disputes with their employer can seek assistance using the 1955 foreign labor counseling and protection hotline or at service centers set up by local governments, the ministry said.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

President has failed workers: groups

President has failed workers: groups

SEVEN-YEAR ITCH:Advocacy groups panned Ma’s time in office, saying his policies have not helped most Taiwanese, with wages falling and national debt rising

By Lii Wen  /  Staff reporter

A man looks at a large cardboard cutout of President Ma Ying-jeou plastered with signs detailing his administration’s failed policies, in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times

President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) presidency has been characterized by stagnant wages and deteriorating working conditions, several human rights and labor advocacy groups said yesterday, as the nation marked the seventh anniversary of Ma’s taking office.
Referring to Ma’s recent remarks that he had “no problem sleeping at night,” the groups urged the president to “wake up” and empathize with the public’s hardships.
Led by the Taiwan Labour Front, the groups plastered signs labeled with what they described as failed government policies onto a large cardboard cutout of Ma, who is depicted jogging in track shorts.
The Ma administration’s misguided economic policies, designed to cater to the needs of wealthy business groups, have failed to bring growth as promised, but instead they have exacerbated economic inequality, the groups said.
The past seven years were also marked by a stark rise in government debt, huge tax reductions for the wealthy, increasing economic reliance on China and protests against land seizures, they added.
Actual earnings for Taiwanese workers have dropped to wage levels of 16 years ago, with employees who earn less than NT$40,000 a month comprising about 69 percent of all salaried employees — or nearly 6 million people, Taiwan Labour Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said.
The Ma administration has repeatedly attempted to prevent an increase in the minimum wage, he added, before describing the recent “four laws for pay raises” as “cheap tricks” to swindle the public.
Alliance for Fair Tax Reform spokesman Hung Ching-shu (洪敬舒) said that the tax reductions introduced by the Ma administration have led to a decrease in Taiwan’s tax burden from 13.4 percent in 2008 to 12 percent in 2013, while debt figures have skyrocketed.
Moreover, the tax deductions have failed to attract foreign capital and have only benefited speculative investments in the real-estate market and driven up housing prices, Hung said.
He added that government initiatives, such as the luxury tax and capital gains tax, lack substance.
Property tax reform might be the only way that the Ma administration can “redeem itself” during its last year in government, Housing Movement spokesperson Peng Yang-kai (彭揚凱) said.
Peng accused the government of inaction in curbing soaring housing prices, adding that government policies on increasing public housing have not been realized.
The past seven years saw the constant threat of “economic marginalization,” in which the government exaggerates the importance of pursuing free-trade agreements with China, Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said.
The Ma administration has sacrificed Taiwan’s economic and political sovereignty through “devil’s deals” with China, while Taiwanese are left to endure the exploitative actions of cross-strait business conglomerates, Lai said.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Workers say Inventec layoffs illegal

Workers say Inventec layoffs illegal

‘ABANDONED’:Engineer Liu Chia-hui said the company had abandoned the workers after they worked hard to build its reputation as a global leader in the industry

By Lii Wen  /  Staff reporter

Laid-off Inventec workers protest in front of the Ministry of Labor in Taipei yesterday, as police officers bar access to the building.

Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times

Dozens of former employees of Inventec Corp — the nation’s leading contract computer and mobile device manufacturer — yesterday rallied outside the Ministry of Labor in Taipei to protest the massive layoff of nearly 200 workers in late March.
The Inventec Workers’ Self-Help Organization said that the mass layoffs were illegal.
The organization demanded that the company re-employ the workers.
They said that since Inventec made high revenues and profits over the past year, the unexpected cutbacks failed to meet the legal requirements for layoffs in Article 11 of the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
They accused the company of taking advantage of a loophole in regulations on mass redundancy by conducting the layoffs through successive small-scale operations, cutting down on the number of its workers dozens at a time over the course of several days.
Organization president Chang Yung-lung (張永隆) said the company’s claims that it had provided assistance to the workers to find new employment opportunities were not accurate.
“The company failed to fulfill its responsibilities in providing assistance for its employees, but rather resorted to spreading rumors about employment assistance and that the workers have accepted superior severance packages,” Chang said.
Labor rights campaigner Yao Kuang-chu (姚光祖) said the mass redundancies were the result of the company outsourcing its production lines in Taoyuan’s Dashi District (大溪) to China.
Liu Chia-hui (劉佳輝), a former testing engineer at the Dashi plant, said he began his career at Inventec when the company purchased its production line for computer servers from US technology company Digital Equipment Corp in 1998.
He said that Inventec had abandoned the workers after they worked hard to build firm’s reputation as a global industry leader, with recent expansion in manufacturing facilities in the Czech Republic and Mexico.
“Inventec started out as a notebook manufacturer; it did not make servers at the time,” Liu said.
“It would not have enjoyed its success today if it were not for us senior employees [from Digital Equipment Corp] who were willing to break our backs for the company,” Liu added.
The majority of the employees who were laid off are in their 40s and 50s and could experience a difficult time in finding employment elsewhere, Liu said.
Chen Yu-wen (陳毓雯), deputy director of the ministry’s Department of Labor Relations, said that the ministry is to hold negotiations between the workers and Inventec tomorrow to determine whether the layoffs constituted illegal behavior.