KMT legislator ridiculed over strike, ‘overwork’ bill

By Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

After being ridiculed by netizens, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said he has asked to retract his signature from draft legislation that is said to contradict the demands made by the flight attendants who were on strike on Friday, for whom Chiang voiced his support.

Chiang, along with a few other KMT lawmakers, on Friday morning visited the sit-in of the flight attendants, who had started their strike at midnight on Thursday, and who ended it on Friday night after the Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union and China Airlines (CAL) reached a preliminary agreement.

On Thursday night, after the union announced its decision to go on strike, Chiang said on Facebook that Taiwan should say goodbye to long work hours and that “as a child of a CAL worker, I have deep feelings for CAL and do hope that it can turn into a paradigm for enterprises that could provide employees with agreeable working environments.”

However, the KMT lawmakers’ visit triggered online ridicule later on Friday, when it was found that almost all of those who visited the strikers had signed a bill proposed by KMT Legislator Wang Hui-mei (王惠美) that calls for amending Article 84-1 of the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), which would allow virtually all employers to “arrange their own working hours, regular days off, national holidays and female workers’ night work through other agreements with their [employees.]”

While the existing Article 84-1 of the act restricts such arrangements to only certain types of work that have obtained “the approval and public announcement of the Central Competent Authority,” the bill proposes to remove the prerequisite.

Wang on Friday responded to the criticism that the amendment would subject practically all employees to overwork and irregular work hours by saying she tabled the amendment because many workers told her that they were not able to make extra money they needed to make ends meet due to regulations set by factories limiting their number of overtime hours.

She also said that there are provisos in the proposal that forbid employers from using “illegitimate means, such as using force, threats or deceit” to make the employees agree to prolonged work hours or extra overtime.”

Netizens said that one of the union’s demands is for CAL not to apply Article 84-1 to all flight attendants, regardless of the type of flight — regional or transpacific — which they said would greatly harm the rights of those who work regional flights.

Citing the contradiction, they accused the KMT lawmakers, including Chiang, of pulling a political stunt by visiting the strikers.

Chiang yesterday said on Facebook that he acknowledges that there is some “impropriety” in the proposal that would make it difficult to protect labor rights.

“I have already made a call to Legislator Wang and asked for a retraction of my signature from the bill,” he said.