Political forces shaping labor protests: groups

By Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

Pro-independence organizations yesterday rallied outside the Legislative Yuan building to support Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), who was allegedly attacked by protesters outside the building on Friday last week. The rally condemned the violence and said that political forces are manipulating labor protests to cause social instability.

Accompanied by other pro-

independence campaigners, Chilly Chen (陳峻涵), office director of the 908 Taiwan Republic Campaign, said they condemn violence against any legislator and thanked the police for protecting Ker from “life-threatening danger” during Friday’s scuffle.

Chen brought a bouquet of flowers to Ker, but he was conducting cross-party negotiations at the legislature and did not come outside to take the bouquet.

“We condemn the attack ... allegedly carried out by labor protesters. They have deliberately introduced violent tactics to obstruct the legislative process. Their action has damaged our society’s commitment to the rule of law,” he said.

Chen demanded that the judiciary conduct an investigation to find out if the attackers were political agitators pretending to be labor rights advocates to stir up chaos.

“We support our labor friends and protection of labor rights, but we are against hidden forces using agitators to instigate violence and cause division in society,” he said.

Taiwanese National Party

Secretary-General Chang Chun-jung (張春榮) said the ongoing labor protests are only supported by a small segment of society, because the organizations involved in them have questionable motives and are manipulated by political parties as a means to undermine the DPP government.

“It is known that some trade unions were not really fighting for workers’ rights, but were set up for token representation. For a long time, the top leaderships of these trade unions have been controlled and appointed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and these dark forces still pervade in Taiwan’s labor union movement,” Chang said.

Chang urged pro-independence organizations and civic groups to closely monitor the labor protests.

“It was obvious that the protesters channeled their hostility against the DPP, whereas the decision to cut seven national holidays and most of the current labor policies were made during past KMT administrations. Yet these protesters are colluding with KMT and pro-unification groups in an attempt to destabilize our society and create divisions among the public,” Chang said.

Legislature passes Labor Standards Act amendments

Legislature passes amendments

‘MAJORITY VIOLENCE’:KMT Legislator Lin Li-chan was sent to a hospital after being injured in one of a number of brawls between KMT and DPP lawmakers

By Chen Wei-han  /  Staff reporter

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers fight for control of the speaker’s podium in the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times

The legislature yesterday passed a set of controversial amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), which would cancel seven national holidays and implement one “flexible rest day” as a supporting measure to the 40-hour workweek policy, ending a months-long legislative struggle.

The amendments stipulate that employees are entitled to two days off every week, with one being a mandatory day off and the other a flexible rest day, on which employees can be asked to work and receive overtime payment.

The amendments also reduced the number of national holidays by seven, while allowing employers to provide more annual leave days than permitted previously.

The legislation was passed amid fighting between lawmakers. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers occupied the speaker’s podium in the Legislative Yuan’s general assembly chamber in the morning to disrupt proceedings and prevent the controversial amendments from being put to a vote.

The KMT demanded that the number of national holidays remain unchanged, with KMT caucus convener Sufin Siluko (廖國棟) saying that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should seek a consensus over the legislation.

Following the standoff, Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) called a cross-caucus negotiation meeting, which Minister of Labor Kuo Fong-yu (郭芳煜) attended.

The six-hour negotiations ended without reaching a consensus, and DPP lawmakers regained the speaker’s podium after scuffles with KMT legislators, during which KMT Legislator Lin Li-chan (林麗蟬) was injured and taken to a hospital.

The floor meeting resumed at about 4:30pm amid turmoil, with the DPP caucus raising motions to end general discussion of the amendments, which were then put to a vote in the second reading.

Despite opposition from the KMT, the New Power Party (NPP) and the People First Party, the DPP — which holds a legislative majority — voted to pass the amendments.

The DPP’s version of the amendments is better than those of the other parties in terms of protecting labor rights, DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said.

“I am confident that our version of the amendments is the most progressive, and it protects all of the interests of workers,” he said, adding that it was the most worker-friendly in terms of annual leave, especially for younger employees who lack seniority.

“Is Taiwan a leading global economy? We must face problems of national competitiveness,” Ker said in defense of the scrapping of seven national holidays. “Many workers want to work overtime to receive overtime pay. The amendments allow flexibility for those workers.”

The KMT was most responsible for unrest related to the legislation, because it failed to create better working conditions during previous labor law revisions when it was in power, he added.

The KMT called a news conference at 7:40pm, while voting was still in progress, to apologize for its failure in preventing the DPP from passing the amendments, saying it could not resist President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) “tyranny and arrogance” and the DPP’s “majority violence,” which would result in 9 million workers losing seven national holidays.

“We are deeply sorry, but we pledge a continuous commitment to the rights of workers,” it said in a statement.

The NPP caucus also criticized the passage of the amendments, with NPP caucus whip Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) saying that there was no justification for the DPP to force their passage if it could halt same-sex marriage legislation.

The legislature late last night passed a third reading of the amendments.

Legislature fails to pass labor bill

By Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators occupy the speaker’s podium during a debate on proposed amendments to the Labor Standards Act at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: CNA

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The legislature yesterday failed to pass proposed amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) amid protests from opposition parties and labor groups outside the Legislative Yuan building.

The session is to resume on Tuesday, when lawmakers are expected to vote on the amendments.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) yesterday morning said that the amendments have dragged on for more than four months and employers and employees are both getting impatient, adding that the DPP’s version of the amendments is the “most responsible one that would strike a balance between the employees and the employers.”

The DPP caucus, following Ker’s remarks, agreed that the amendments would be cleared before the end of yesterday’s session, despite opposition from DPP Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬), who said she would fight for her own values when it comes to voting.

Lin posted on Facebook that the DPP caucus announced in a caucus meeting that caucus members could not waver from the stance taken by the caucus, and failing to do so would be considered a breach of party discipline and result in punishment.

Following the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) caucus meeting in the morning, KMT caucus convener Sufin Siluko (廖國棟) said that the “battlefront for the caucus has moved toward the import ban on food products from Japanese prefectures” surrounding the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

He said that the KMT caucus had its own version of the amendments and would negotiate with the DPP, but added that he had expected workers to form a strong opposition to the amendments, which “would have encouraged the KMT caucus to fight to the end.”

However, it seemed that it was not the case, and that made the KMT lawmakers hesitant, Sufin said.

The cross-caucus negotiation ended at about 4pm. No substantial consensus over the amendments was reached, but the KMT caucus agreed to withdraw their occupation of the speaker’s podium that they carried out since noon.

“They want a vote so let us vote and have two trains crash into each other,” said KMT Legislator Arthur Chen (陳宜民) after walking out of negotiations.

The floor meeting resumed with the speaker announcing an overall discussion of the amendments to the Labor Standards Act, which were expected to be followed by a clause-by-clause discussion.

DPP lawmakers called the amendments “flexible” enough to benefit both the employers and employees.

“Do not forget we have 3.8 million small and medium-sized enterprises and they would need flexibility in their operation,” DPP Legislator Wang Ding-yu (王定宇) said.

However, the discussion came to a halt after KMT Legislator Alicia Wang’s (王育敏) took to the podium to speak.

Wang asked why workers continued to protest “if the amendments were as good as the DPP lawmakers said they were.”

Her remarks were met with DPP lawmakers’ retorts and KMT lawmakers gathered around Wang.

“The DPP’s overbearing attitude is simply unbelievable. Did we interrupt your speech? This is tyranny of the majority,” KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) said.

The legislative speaker tried to calm lawmakers and gave Wang extra time to finish her remarks, but could not assuage KMT lawmakers’ discontent and adjourned the session for 10 minutes to call for a cross-caucus negotiation.

The speaker said the session would continue on Tuesday.

The amendments seek to scrap seven national holidays and implement “one flexible rest day and one fixed day off” to accommodate a 40-hour workweek passed last year, and the DPP caucus has promised to make them up by increasing overtime pay and allowing workers to have annual leave days earlier than permitted by existing regulations.

The DPP caucus’ motion on annual leave would benefit younger employees with relatively few service years who are entitled to less annual leave days, the caucus said.

Regulations stipulate that employees can have seven annual leave days after a full year of service, 10 days after three years of service, 14 days after five years, 15 days after 10 years and one additional day with every additional year of service thereafter until it reaches the maximum 30 days after 25 years of service.

The DPP caucus proposed to allow those with six months of service to have three days of annual leave, seven annual leave days after one year of service, 10 days after two years, 14 days after three years, 15 days after five years and one additional day for every additional year of service after ten years of service until the limit of 30 days is reached.

Additional reporting by CNA

Protesters urge no holiday cuts till leave reform

By Abraham Gerber  /  Staff reporter

Civic groups including the Taiwan Association of Human Rights and the Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBT) Hotline Association yesterday rally outside the legislature in Taipei to protest against the government’s proposal to cut the number of national holidays.

Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times

A reduction in the number of national holiday should be put on hold until reforms to annual leave regulations have been specified, labor rights campaigners said yesterday at a protest outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.

More than a dozen demonstrators from several labor unions and civic groups gathered in front of a tent where protesters have been on hunger strike for almost a month.

“If you’re really going to reduce the number of national holidays, you should at least put forward an entire plan and clearly explain your reasoning,” Taiwan Association of Human Rights member Wang Hsi (王曦) said.

Seven national holidays would be cut under a proposed amendment to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) aimed at reducing working hours.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has proposed increasing the number of days of annual leave for newly employed workers as partial compensation for the reduction, but the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus chose not to specify the extent of those increases in cross-caucus negotiations on Wednesday, drawing criticism from rival caucuses.

“If they haven’t even considered how annual leave will be reformed, reducing the number of national holidays will just make working conditions worse,” Workers Struggle Alliance member Kuo Kuan-chun (郭冠均) said.

Kuo accused DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) of failing to ensure that workers would be guaranteed extra annual leave or receive compensation.

“Ker’s language was copied directly from the Ministry of Labor regulations,” he said. “There should be provisions requiring that workers automatically be awarded extra salary for any unused leave, unlike the current rules which require employees to demonstrate that their employers prevented them from taking the days off.”

Taoyuan Confederation of Trade Unions chairman Chuang Fu-kai (莊福凱) also criticized Ker’s statement that failing to pass the amendments by the end of the year would constitute a “breach of duty.”

“This just shows who [the DPP’s] real ‘bosses’ are — industrial and business associations,” Chuang said, before leading protesters in promising to “fight to the end” against the cuts to national holidays.

Assets committee trampling over labor rights: KMT

By Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday said that a statement by the Taipei Department of Labor reaffirming that employers are obliged to pay workers in accordance with the law is “a slap in the face to the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee,” which said that the KMT was intentionally obfuscating the issue.

KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Wang Hong-wei (王鴻薇) told a morning news conference in Taipei that the Executive Yuan, the Ministry of Labor and the department have been “allowing the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee and its director, Wellington Koo (顧立雄), to trample labor rights with its political agenda and flout the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) and the spirit of the law.”

The KMT has not been able to pay its employees on time and has filed a plan with the department for a possible mass layoff, Wang said.

“However, the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee froze the KMT’s funds and denied that paying salaries, severance and pensions required in a mass layoff is a statutory obligation,” Wang said.

Wang said that she received an official reply from the department after inquiring about the matter and that it issued a statement confirming that the act requires employers to pay workers and stipulates punishments if they do not.

“Does Koo consider himself above the law and the department’s superior?” Wang asked.

Former department commissioner Chen Yeh-shin (陳業鑫), who is also a lawyer, said at the news conference that the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee has unabashedly contravened the law, adding that no matter how heated the political feud is, “labor rights should not be affected.”

Chen asked the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee to release some of the funds it has ordered frozen and restrict them for specific uses, which in this case would be for salaries, severance and pensions.

Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee spokeswoman Shih Chin-fang (施錦芳) said that it concurs with the department’s statement about employer obligations, but added that the party should pay its employees with legally earned political donations and party fees.

It could also use real estate registered under the KMT’s name rather than — as the party has proposed — properties listed as assets of Central Investment Co (中央投資公司) and Hsinyutai Co (欣裕台), which the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee has ordered be transferred to the central government, Shih said.

The KMT should stop obfuscating the issue and solve its own problems by appropriate means, she said.

KMT assets protesters clash with police

‘UNHELPFUL’:KMT officials accused the ill-gotten assets committee of withholding information on its review of the party’s two investment companies’ capital structure

By Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members and workers clash with police outside the building housing the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee on Songjiang Road in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times

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Protesters and police yesterday clashed as scores of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members attempted to storm the building housing the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, while several high-level KMT officials were inside examining records of a committee hearing last month concerning two KMT-owned investment companies.

Shouting slogans such as “No truth without justice” and “Unjust [committee chairman] Wellington Koo (顧立雄), illegal Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee,” members of the party’s Youth League and Taipei-based women’s affairs division gathered outside the committee’s building in Zhongshan District (中山) at about 9:30am.

Several protesters threw eggs and bundles of ghost money at the building, while others tried to break through police lines, only to be carried away by police.

“Although there are only 200 of us standing before the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee today, we represent all the 23 million people of Taiwan,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said, urging KMT supporters to make their voices heard through all possible channels.

The protest took place concurrently with three KMT officials’ examination of records of the Cabinet-affiliated committee’s Oct. 7 hearing, which was held to determine whether Central Investment Co and its subsidiary Hsinyutai Co ought to be classified as KMT affiliate organizations and if their shares should be transferred to the government.

The committee on Nov. 1 concluded that the two companies are KMT affiliate organizations, and on Friday ruled that since they were founded using illegally obtained assets, all KMT shareholdings in the firms must be turned over to the government.

“We are here today for three purposes. First is to carefully examine records of the hearing to see if they truthfully reflected what we had expressed, because we spotted many mistakes during our preliminary check,” KMT Administration and Management Committee director Chiu Da-chan (邱大展) said.

Chiu said they also intended to review recordings of the hearing, if any, to understand how the committee arrived at its decision and whether they were made based on Koo’s opinions alone.

As many documents — such as those concerning how the Central Investment Co was founded in 1971, which were originally kept at the Ministry of Economic Affairs — have been retrieved by the committee, thus making them inaccessible to the KMT, Chiu said they also planned to examine those files in the committee.

At a press conference held later yesterday, Chiu accused the committee of engaging in “black-box operations,” saying a committee staff member asked to receive them was utterly unhelpful.

“The female staff member, surnamed Chu (朱), refused to show us the investigation records and the minutes of the meeting between the committee and former KMT treasurers Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英) and Hsu Li-teh (徐立德), saying we did not file a formal request,” Chiu said.

Chiu said his inquiries regarding whether the committee had presented documents provided by the KMT relating to the party’s founding capital for Central Investment to all committee members were also dismissed.

He added that he was denied access to minutes of the committee’s meeting on Friday and its finalized letter of disposition.

“Even if it is a court case, all relevant investigation and court documents are available to the public. Why does the committee refuse to make public its documents? If this is not ‘black-box operation,’ then what is?” Chiu said.

Uber takes out ad to slam sharp increase in penalty

ILLEGAL?The ad urged people to sign a petition that would create a separate classification for ride-sharing apps, as lawmakers defended the proposed changes

By Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter

Uber Taiwan yesterday published an advertisement in two Chinese-language newspapers to protest against proposed amendments to the Highway Act (公路法) that would increase the penalty for illegal transport service operators from NT$150,000 to NT$25 million (US$4,717 to US$786,114).

The ride-sharing application developer paid for a half-page advertisement on the front page of the Apple Daily and the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper).

The advertisement used photographs of people Uber said are its drivers, including parents, pensioners and those who have other regular jobs.

“We embrace the power of moving the nation forward, but the government is imposing a NT$25 million penalty as a barrier,” the company said in the advertisement, adding that Taiwan cannot afford to have a backward-moving policy.

The advertisement urged people to sign a petition asking the government to amend the Highway Act by listing Uber, LetsRide, Lalamove and other ride-sharing applications as “Internet transport service providers,” which have yet to exist in the current legal framework.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) said in the legislature’s Transportation Committee meeting that what Uber did would only cause public authority to collapse.

DPP Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said that Uber did not buy the advertisements to promote its business, but to stop the Legislative Yuan from increasing fines.

“It appears that the company is finally showing some signs of concern over the increase in fines against it. However, the advertisement also shows that it is reluctant to join the diversified taxi service proposed by the government,” he said.

Cheng said that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ diversified taxi service plan would regulate Uber based on the current laws, ensuring that both passengers and drivers are insured and compensated, and that Uber pays taxes in Taiwan.

For the government’s plan to work the ride-sharing application must match service requests with taxi drivers from different taxi service providers and allow drivers to make a reasonable profit, Cheng said.

“The key is that both the ministry and I believe that Uber can continue to operate as long as it follows the rules. All the rulings handed down to the company only ask that it operate legally. This is how the government handles all illegal operations in all sectors,” he said.

“I hope that Taiwanese service operators can compete against multinational companies like Uber, so long as it is done legally,” he said.