Unions say will go ahead with Workers’ Day march

By Abraham Gerber  /  Staff Reporter

Labor organizations yesterday pledged to go ahead with their annual Workers’ Day march, saying they needed to “warn” the incoming government not to sacrifice labor rights.

Representatives from more than 20 labor organizations led by the Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions gathered on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei, saying the new administration would not be on “honeymoon” after it takes office on May 20.

“We are not subordinate to any political party and will continue to fight for our rights,” said Hsinchu County Confederation of Trade Unions president Chan Su-chen (詹素貞), who is to direct this year’s march.

Opposition to potential national pension cuts and a proposed law to regulate contract workers were the main issues in the unions’ demands.

“We labor organizations have never trusted [president-elect] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) — her roots are corporate,” National Federation of Independent Trade Unions inspector-general Chen Te-liang (陳德亮) said, blasting Tsai for proposing a law to increase regulation of contract workers, who are sometimes used by corporations to skirt labor requirements for formally employed workers.

“If you respect workers, you can absolutely not permit contract labor to continue to exist,” he said, comparing the practice to “sexual harassment” — something which had to be banned outright.

Taoyuan Confederation of Trade Unions chairman Chuang Fu-kai (莊福凱) said that while the details of Tsai’s national pension reforms have yet to be announced, it appears the reforms would include reductions to worker benefits.

“We talked about whether to hold a march this year, because Tsai will not have taken office and normally the march targets the policies of sitting governments,” Tainan County Confederation of Trade Unions secretary-general Huang Yu-te (黃育德) said.

“However, we have discovered that many of the policies we advocate are in total opposition to Tsai’s policies, so we cannot wait until she takes office to start discussing these problems,” Huang said.

He said while concrete policy details have yet to emerge, Cabinet appointments have served to confirm union fears that Tsai would continue President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) labor policies, which labor organizations have criticized for an allegedly pro-capitalist bent.

“It looks as if labor interests are set to be marginalized,” Huang said, adding that the planned appointment of Deputy Minister of Labor Kuo Fan-yu (郭芳煜) as minister of labor showed that Tsai is interested in continuing past policies and was not considering substantial reforms.

Closure of yoga business probed

By Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

An Investigation Bureau official yesterday confiscates evidence from a Chiu Su Jen Yoga Center in Taipei after the company closed down on Thursday.

Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times

Judicial investigators yesterday searched the offices of Chiu Su Jen Yoga Center (邱素貞瑜珈天地) in Taipei after it abruptly shut down and there were allegations that its owner, Chen Yu-feng (陳玉芬), had absconded to Australia with the company’s funds.

Prosecutors said they are looking to bring fraud charges against Chen, adding that she might have covered up the company’s financial problems before fleeing the country with membership fees and other assets worth more than NT$10 million (US$309,780).

Armed with warrants, prosecutors and officers from the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau conducted searches at the company’s offices, yoga centers and Chen’s residence, confiscating documents and material related to membership lists, financial ledgers and bank accounts.

Two company accountants were summoned for questioning at the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, while Chen was listed as a suspect in a pending fraud case.

Prosecutors urged Chen to return to Taiwan and cooperate with the investigation.

After the company closed down on Thursday, the Consumer Protection Commission received nearly 300 complaints about the company, mostly from members and teachers seeking financial recompense.

A woman surnamed Chang (張) told reporters she had just paid NT$100,000 for a 10-year membership.

“The owner has swindled us. I am asking the government to get my money back,” she said.

A group of 30 employees and yoga teachers protested outside the Taipei Department of Labor after they turned up for work on Thursday only to find the company’s offices and yoga centers locked. They said the company owed them many months of unpaid wages.

A notice purportedly written by Chen was posted on the doors of the offices and yoga centers, stating that business operations had been suspended due to financial difficulties caused by management issues and unsuccessful investment in a new business venture.

Chen also sent a similar letter to all members explaining that she had gone abroad to take care of her ailing husband, who is battling cancer.

Chen said in the letter that she was tired and also had health issues, while promising to return to Taiwan after dealing with her personal affairs.

“The external economic environment, the depressed economy and other factors have resulted in the poor performance of the company and we are unable to pay employees’ wages, therefore we had no choice but to suspend operations as of April 27.... I sincerely apologize for having caused trouble for everyone,” the letter said.

One yoga teacher said when the company signed a contract with her and the other instructors, they had to pay NT$100,000 and a NT$30,000 deposit to the company, money which has not been returned.

Taipei Consumer Protection officer Ho Hsiu-lan (何修蘭) said a preliminary estimate indicated that the company has more than 1,000 members and Chen was still promoting the business and signing up new members until this week.

Ho said one person filed a complaint saying she had paid NT$180,000 for lifetime membership with the promise of unlimited use of the company’s outlets, while another paid NT$120,000 for a four-month yoga instruction course.

Founded in 1976, the Chiu Su Jen Yoga Center is a leading chain with 12 outlets and three “education centers” and about 80 employees, according to company data.

Labor groups, NPP demand minimum wage ‘umbrella’

By Abraham Gerber  /  Staff reporter

Members of the Taiwan Labor Front and New Power Party yesterday in Taipei use umbrellas to spell out “26k” — short for NT$26,000 — which is the minimum wage they want the government to adopt.

Photo: CNA

Minimum wage legislation should be passed to guarantee workers a living wage, labor groups said yesterday at a protest outside the Legislative Yuan, saying that the current review process favors corporate interests.

About 100 demonstrators from the Taiwan Labor Front and New Power Party (NPP) stood in lines to form the characters “26k” along Jinan Road outside the legislature building, holding blue umbrellas to form a symbol of their demand that workers be given a “safety umbrella” of a monthly minimum wage equal to at least NT$26,000.

“Currently, the only reference to the minimum wage in legal statutes is the Labor Standards Act’s (勞動基準法) ‘basic wage,’ but its definition is unclear, leading to haggling every time the review committee meets,” Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said, calling for clear standards to be imposed on the current “chaotic” review process.

“The future minimum wage act, which we hope for, should include a clear calculation formula, as well as specifying what parameters to use and what kinds of pay are included,” he said.

Kaohsiung Confederation of Trade Unions president Chiang Chien-hsing (江健興) said the NT$26,000 figure was chosen because it represents the absolute minimum working wage people need to support themselves and dependents.

“If you do not increase the minimum wage, people end up having to no choice but to work overtime to provide for their families,” he said, estimating that workers earning the current minimum wage of NT$20,008 need to work overtime for an additional six days each month to support their families.

“The current review committee is a sham,” Chiang said, adding that Ministry of Labor officials on the committee often side with corporate interests in the absence of a clear calculation formula, and that there should be a legal requirement that a review be conducted every year.

“Right now it is up to the Ministry of Labor to decide whether to conduct a review and we cannot call for one because there is no law making it a requirement — so often years go by before a meeting is called,” Chiang added.

In related news, the NPP yesterday proposed draft minimum wage legislation that would require a minimum wage equal to at least 60 percent of median disposable income multiplied by workers’ average number of dependents, which would have resulted in a minimum wage of NT$26,867 in 2013, according to party calculations.

“A wave of liberal trade policies around the world has been continually forcing down workers’ wages and has already reached the point of threatening many workers’ survival,” NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said. “The minimum wage has to be at least enough to support workers and their families.”

Part-time staff need guaranteed days off and better regulations: minister

By Abraham Gerber  /  Staff reporter

Minister of Labor Chen Hsiung-wen yesterday speaks at the Legislative Yuan.

Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times

Regulations for part-time workers should be tightened to ensure that they receive days off, Minister of Labor Chen Hsiung-wen (陳雄文) said yesterday.

Chen made the remarks in response to a question from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) at a meeting of the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee.

The committee was discussing the ministry’s plan to review regulations and implement concrete definitions for what constitutes “part-time work” and allow time off for part-time workers.

“Under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), part-time workers who have been employed for more than one year are entitled to paid holiday in proportion to their working hours, but according to ministry surveys, only 58 percent of those eligible for holidays actually receive their days off ,” Wang said, calling on the ministry to make the rights of part-time workers a “top priority” while reviewing the regulations.

“The ministry lets employers and workers decide how paid holidays should be allocated because rules only state that employers ‘could’ — not ‘must’ — provide days off. If workers wanted to be proactive in protecting their rights, they lack clear standards,” she said.

Chen said about one-fifth of the ministry’s more than 50,000 yearly worker inspections target industries employing a large number of part-time workers, with about a quarter of the inspections uncovering violations of workers’ rights, including 400 cases of workers being illegally denied paid holidays last year.

Chinese Nationalist Party Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said the ministry should narrow the definition of what constitutes part-time work to prevent employers from taking advantage of legal loopholes.

“The current definition is extremely vague, which has led to many employers using circuitous methods to make part-time workers perform full-time work,” he said, adding that students and women who make up a majority of part-time workers often lack the bargaining power to negotiate with employers for their rights.

Ministry statistics show that 7.6 percent of part-time workers work more than 40 hours per week.

“The rights of part-time and full-time workers are the same, so their designation should not make any difference to employers. However, some employers exploit t workers’ lack of understanding and that needs to be changed,” Chen said, adding that the persistence of part-time workers working full-time raised the issue of whether it is necessary to draft “ironclad” rules to clarify the distinction.

Okinawa Tomb Sweeping Getaway

Editor's Note: The following photo blog describes the creepy feeling an Industrial Worker of the World  gets in touring Okinawa, Japan, the scene of the U.S. military's largest, and bloodiest, invasion of World War II on April 1, 1945, and the justification for, a few months later, the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.  

Okinawa Tomb Sweeping Getaway

On Sunday, April 3, 2016, Leona and I took a ninety minute flight from Tao-Yuan Airport 525 miles northeastward over the Ryukyu Pacific Trench to Okinawa, Japan. It was our first visit  there. Upon arrival at the brand new Naha International Airport, we walked a short distance to Yui Monorail, a fifteen station line that snakes its way through Naha from the airport to Shurijo Castle Park. 

Once Leona figured out the fare rate, we were on our way. The first thing we did was check in to our hotel; seven stops and twenty minutes away. We soon arrived at APA Hotel.

The APA is a hotel chain all over Japan with the CEO of forty-four years, Toshio Moroya (on the right) at the helm. Here he is with Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, Keiichiro Kobori, who has radically different ideas about Japanese modern history than one reads in the U.S. media.

As I turned to the tiny, clean bathroom, grabbing a magazine called Apple Town and a book by the CEO himself, I sat on my throne. What I learned inside was not surprising.  The magazine, placed in every mini-van sized APA Hotel room, says the truth is being withheld; that Roosevelt was a war criminal, in conspiracy with Churchill and Russia, to divvy up Asia and was to blame for starting the war between China and Japan. The magazine says MacArthur knew the Japanese were only defending themselves from Western attack and testified as such. Prof. Keiichiro Kobori had studied and published books in which he proved it.

 Behind the APA hotel is the Okinawa red light district. With neon lights blinking in tittie bars, taxis trawling the alleys for satisfied clients who've had enough, it was a cinch finding Orion Beer on tap and fried-noodle  for a midnight snack. We felt no danger from the clientele; Japanese are discreet in their carnal pursuits. Afterwards, we returned to the room, tended to my bronchitis, watched TV, and spent a restless night due to  my coughing. Maybe I could have used this aphrodisiac snake liquor medicine we spotted in a shop on Kokusai Street? Nah; I needed cough syrup. 

After a short walk from our hotel, we perused the tourist traps on Kokusai Street.  I had an A&W Root Beer. Along with Blue Seal ice cream (Foremost) these establishments have been quenching the thirst of American servicemen occupying Okinawa since 1952, not long after the April 1, 1945 invasion, putting sweet icing on their bloody cake. 

Just off Kosusai Street, you will see the Tsuboya Pottery Village. Okinawa is famous for its pottery and the stylized lion ceramics can be spotted all over the islands, The uncrowded lanes had dozens of unique shops. It was very relaxing and we enjoyed the scenery, not a throwback to another time, but a modern artistic spot for new bourgeois travelers.

After strolling and choosing ceramics for the home, we pumped water at the well and worked up an appetite. We knew exactly where  to go: Makishi Public Market for fresh seafood lunch.

Makishi Public Market is a row of covered streets with merchant stalls and shops lining the way. It seemed a bit antiquated, a throwback to the '60's, and many of the vendors showed their age. No modern fashions were to be found here but there were a number of second-hand stores and book shops. In one of them, I came across the 1979 theater guide to the Japanese cast of Fiddler on the Roof. Oy Vay! Wish I could hear the soundtrack!

 Another shop made a unique starchy peanut-tofu  pudding onto which you splash some sweet soy sauce and dig in with a tiny spoon. You can see the extent of quality control from the old-timer making filling one cup at a time. The mall was antiquated but it was not dirty or smelly at all. After buying a pencil, with a tip of a monkey head, we got another tip, from the vendor of cat related items, and we made our way through the uncrowded tentacles of the mall to Makishi Public Market food court. The fresh catch we saw was amazing.

 Now, how does that trick in the Chinese tourist book work? Let's see: Go up to the second floor. You will see a number of restaurants spreading tables out from of their kitchens. Find the restaurant you like and tell the waitress you want them to prepare fresh catch from downstairs. She will tell you which fishmonger is their favorite. Give them the card (above) she gives you.   They will deliver it upstairs, then you decide what style you'd like. We opted for half salted, half sashimi fish (the small orange one in the bottom right corner) and a small lobster broiled in butter, half of which will be put in miso soup. We also went for the sea grapes, a seaweed tasting treat like salmon caviar. We were set for the best seafood meal we would have since that dinner in Marseilles!  

Tip: Go early for lunch (around 11:00 am) for the best selection. 

Shurijo Castle Park 

At least it wasn't made of Lego! 

The castle they built from  plywood, and painted maroon, copied graphics, the copy, the respect of the native dressed security guards, without a hint of the destruction that took place there in May 1945, will last long after the perpetrator's flags are finally taken down from the American airbase on Okinawa. 

Perhaps this is one of the buildings that wasn't blasted to smithereens during in the Okinawa Invasion. Maybe they picked up the splinters and taped it back together.  

You shouldn't think it's cheesy-looking. The Okinawan culture was old and cultured with their own written language similar to Japanese. Their history goes back to the middle ages, and in one month, May 1945, it was obliterated. The U.S. tried to blame Japan: "They made the U.S. do it," Western historians say. The Japanese have taken care to bring back the memory of the beauty; not the pain. 

Many of the stones were still there, reassembled, although there was a lot of fabrication copied from old photographs. They did have the blueprints from past repairs to guide them. The rebuilt palace was finished in 2006. 

This is what one structure looked like before April 1, 1945.

Let the world know that there were Crusaders, Conquistadors, Totalitarian Communists, Capitalist Imperialist and Colonizers before there was Bin Laden and ISIS to destroy art, culture, and our world's heritage. Will Shurijo be protected because the U.N. says so?

Down to the cave in the mouth of doom... 

 The stalagmites, standing upright in the cavern in southern Okinawa, looked eerily like spirits in death shrouds. The underground water filtered the blood-soaked soil so they could make the local beer with it. I'm glad I was ignorant of the extent of carnage in Okinawa or I wouldn't have been able to enjoy myself there. 

Like spirits hanging in the wind, beauty, and a reminder.

...down down down in the gloom gloom gloom. 

All the Blue Seal ice-cream couldn't make the invaders presence sweeter. All the A&W Root Beer won't quench the murderous nation's throat. There'll be dancing and singing when the people of this planet send American capitalism away for good.

Where have all the soldiers gone, filtered through the mud and gore? Gone to crystal springs in caves, everyone.

Such beauty cannot cover the inhumanity of man to man in the name of greed. Look at this  entrance to the cave in Southern Okinawa. Who came in here to hide and escape? Who came in here to rape and murder? 

Back to the
surface. 

 I decided to Google "Battle of Okinawa" last evening. I am glad I remained ignorant about the blood-soaked island in WWII's bloodiest Allied attack, an invasion much larger than in Normandy, on mostly civilian population, the fierce fighting they encountered used as an excuse for dropping the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; to reduce civilian (and Allied) casualties. It must have been cheaper, too, than losing hundreds of planes, ships, artillery, and over 12,000 U.S. deaths and twice as much injured and shell-shocked, 200,000 Okinawan and Japanese deaths, mostly civilian, and the Western propaganda blames the Japanese for being ruthless and using civilians as human shields. 

Bitter melon is the produce of Okinawa. It  is quite delicious but whether you have it as ice cream, tea, on a hamburger, in soup, stuffed or dried, it leaves a taste in your mouth that cannot be washed away. Our getaway to Okinawa on Tomb-Sweeping Weekend in Taiwan  is better for what I should have left unsaid, but there is beauty in the caves below the surface, too, and the beer made from the filtered water of the underground  spring was remarkable. For Okinawa and Japan, Okinawa's past cannot be "gotten-away" from.

Taiwan, 525 miles to the southwest of Okinawa, was spared hand-to-hand combat by the U.S. Why? The mountains of Taiwan? The amount of Japanese loyalty here? The millions of people here? Okinawa was smaller, closer? Or were they saving Taiwan for a retreat from China? 

      Like a sore throat from bronchitis, Okinawa will always be hard to swallow, but it is a nice place to recuperate; get your voice back. Take a sad song and make it better.