Cabinet resigns en masse after KMT election defeat

Cabinet resigns en masse after KMT election defeat (update)

2014/12/01 13:10:25

Taipei, Dec. 1 (CNA) Premier Jiang Yi-huah led his Cabinet to resign en masse Monday in the wake of the ruling Kuomintang's crushing defeat in Saturday's local government elections, widely seen as a vote of no confidence in the government.

Jiang's Cabinet will remain in a caretaker role until a new premier is sworn in.

President Ma Ying-jeou, who many speculate will step down as chairman of the KMT this week to take responsibility for the election outcome, has so far not named the next premier.

Speaking during a meeting after the resignation, Jiang urged his Cabinet members to stand firm at their posts of duty during the caretaker period to ensure the normal operation of the country.

He told them major or controversial policies should be left to the new Cabinet to decide, saying that Saturday's election demonstrates that people are not satisfied with the direction of the government.

"In addition to respecting the opinions expressed by the people through their votes, we should closely examine why we could not win support from more voters," he said.

Despite the solemn occasion, the premier smiled and appeared relaxed as he took group photos with his Cabinet members after the meeting as a parting memento.

When asked by reporters about his next move, Jiang kept smiling but did not speak a word.

Due to the Cabinet's en masse resignation, several committees in the Legislative Yuan were adjourned early Monday because many Cabinet ministers were absent from hearings.

(By Tang Pei-chun, Chen Wei-ting, Tseng Ying-yu, Tai Ya-chen and Y.F. Low)
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Gender equality act amended

WORKPLACE EQUALITY:The amendments include longer paternity leave, five paid days off for antenatal exams and guaranteed half-pay for menstrual leave

The legislature passed an amendment to the Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別工作平等法) yesterday to make paternity leave longer when spouses are in labor, grant five paid days off for pregnant employees to undergo antenatal examinations and clarify that half-pay is guaranteed for menstrual leave.

Revisions have been made to seven articles of the existing act, which stipulates that while employees’ spouses are in labor, their employers must grant them three paid days off as paternity leave, but which has no regulations on working pregnant women’s welfare concerning pre-birth examinations.

The newly passed amendments grant five more birth-related paid days off to pregnant employees for prenatal checkups, an increase from the existing maternity leave granted before and after childbirth for a combined period of eight weeks.

Also granted by the new law is an extension of paternity leave for employees with spouses in labor to five days.

“With paternity leave extended to five days that could be combined with two weekends, [employees with spouses in labor] can now have a total of nine days to stay with their spouses and take care of the baby,” said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏), convener of the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee.

The Ministry of Labor has estimated that about 174,000 employees will benefit from the change every year and that employers need to shoulder an extra annual expenditure of NT$470 million (US$15.2 million).

About 140,000 pregnant employees will benefit from the days off for pre-birth examinations annually, costing employers about NT$790 million, the ministry said.

The existing act allowed one day of menstrual leave each month and if the cumulative menstrual leave did not exceed three days in a year they were not to be counted toward days off for sick leave and be entitled to half-pay, while the amendment makes the three-day non-sick-leave menstrual leave half-paid, rather than unpaid.

Employees now may also apply for unpaid parental leave before any of their children reach the age of three years old after being employed for six months, instead of one year under the existing law.

Adoptive parents are now also entitled to non-pay parental leave if the adoptive children are under three years of age, Wang said.

“Other improvements include the requirement for employers [hiring more than 250 employees] to set up not only child-care facilities [pursuant to the current regulations], but also lactation rooms and the strengthening of penalties for gender discrimination,” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) said.

Penalties related to gender discrimination have also been raised from between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000 (US$3,225 and US$16,126) to between NT$300,000 and NT$1.5 million.

However, Yu later expressed concern about implementing the measures, saying that if employers are not well supervised by the government the measures would be toothless.

“I want to remind President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration that the previous amendments passed on May 30 included my proposal to make public the company names and the names of the person in charge of companies that violate the act,” Yu wrote on Facebook.

“The transparency and the subsequently formed social pressure would make employers take their responsibilities for a gender-friendly workplace more seriously,” she wrote.

Ex-toll collectors allege violence

WARDENS ACCUSED:Among those accused of using violence against protesters were two borough wardens, who former toll collectors say assaulted them at a FamilyMart

Former toll collectors yesterday accused police of inaction after the activists were allegedly assaulted by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supporters on Thursday night, when they tried to air their grievances to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) at a KMT rally.

The former toll collectors vowed to stage a string of protests targeting campaign rallies of KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文).

Video footage from local media reports showed a woman at the rally dragging a protester by the hair and slapping her in the face after the protester asked Lien about his opinion on the former toll collectors.

“In the coming week leading up to the elections, we will follow on the heels of all pan-blue camp rallies so the government can hear the voices of the workers,” labor activist Chen Hsiu-lien (陳秀蓮) said.

Police were heard addressing the woman who assaulted the protesters as “Hsiao-chiao (小喬),” Chen said.

Among those accused of using violence against the protesters were two borough wardens of Taipei’s Zhongzheng District (中正), Wang Yao-hsu (王曜樹) and Hsu Yi-ming (許益明), who the toll collectors say physically assaulted them at a FamilyMart convenience store next to the rally venue.

Multiple protests were ongoing, while four representatives of the Former Toll Collectors Self-Help Organization moved a hunger strike to in front of the Ministry of Transportation building after beginning the protest on Thursday afternoon outside KMT headquarters.

They were encamped in a line of large tents on the sidewalk in front of the ministry building.

The former toll collectors congregated in front of the office of Taipei City Police Department’s Zhongzheng Second Precinct yesterday morning, saying that they intended to press charges against the police for “covering up” the alleged acts of violence.

Although police said in a statement on Thursday morning that they were willing to investigate the incident, the former toll collectors said police were unqualified to do so, since the police were “accomplices” to the violence.

The former toll collectors later went to “canvass” the constituencies of Wang and Hsu, Dingdong (頂東) and Nanfu (南福) boroughs respectively, passing out fliers to warn residents about the “violent” borough wardens.

The former toll collectors lost their jobs after the nation switched to a distance-based electronic toll collection system in January, removing all toll booths and leaving about 1,000 toll collectors unemployed.

Indonesia plans to prohibit export of female workers

EXPLOITATION FIGHT:Efforts to end the abuse of Indonesian workers abroad led the nation to threaten a moratorium on the ‘export’ of women and girls

By Lin Hui-chin, Huang Pang-ping and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporters, with staff writer and CNA

Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla, second left, and Indonesian President Joko Widodo, center, flanked by the Cabinet, address officials in Jakarta on Monday last week.

Photo: AFP

Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla on Friday said the government plans to stop exporting female workers to foreign nations within five years.

Due to the previous lack of demand in the domestic market, many Indonesian women have been forced to go abroad seeking jobs, but many have been — in one form or another — subject to psychological or physical trauma and abuse, Kalla said during a meeting with women’s rights groups

Indonesia plans to end all abuse of its citizens working abroad, Kalla said.

The primary source of employment for Indonesian workers seeking jobs in Taiwan is in healthcare, working with elderly people.

According to the Ministry of Labor, the current population of Indonesian workers in Taiwan stands at 222,000, with more than 170,000 working as cleaners or caretakers, forming the front line of long-term healthcare workers for Taiwan’s aging society.

The number of Indonesians coming to Taiwan for employment each month is also on the rise, the ministry added.

Despite the large numbers of Indonesians hired for home care, the impact on healthcare would be minimal, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said.

In terms of home care, the current system is still heavily focused on Taiwanese labor, but rotates the worker between families on shifts, rather than having one person being on call for 24 hours, the health ministry’s Department of Nursing and Healthcare Director-General Teng Su-wen (鄧素文) said.

To prevent a lack of steady labor, the government plans to combine foreign and domestic workers in the home healthcare sector, Teng said, adding that the program is undergoing trials and its effectiveness has yet to be determined.

The health ministry said it has in place a 10-year program for training Taiwanese youth to provide the majority of healthcare services for older Taiwanese, saying that foreign labor, despite its size, is only a supplementary workforce.

Meanwhile, Ministry of Labor Workforce Development Agency Director-General Liao Wei-jen (廖為仁) said the Indonesian government had made similar claims before, adding that the previous time it made such comments, it set a deadline of 2017.

Foreign labor is an unstable labor source and could not be sustained unless Taiwan continues to maintain its comparative economic superiority to Indonesia, Liao said.

The central government is also seeking other sources of foreign labor, he added.

Taiwan raises fines for gender discrimination in workplace

2014/11/21 15:50:05

Taipei, Nov. 21 (CNA) The Legislative Yuan passed a law amendment Friday to triple the fines for discrimination in the workplace on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.

Under the revised Act of Gender Equality in Employment, employers who discriminate against job applicants or employees based on gender or sexual orientation may now be subject to a fine of between NT$300,000 (US$9,702) and NT$1.5 million.

Prior to the amendment, the penalty was between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000.

A survey conducted last year by the Ministry of Labor on 3,283 companies around Taiwan found that 9 percent of employers tend to pay their workers differently based on gender.

Another 4.7 percent consider gender a factor in deciding on pay raises, the poll found.

Women's rights activist Tsai Wan-fen said gender stereotyping remains a serious problem among Taiwanese employers and that increasing the related penalties will help prevent discriminatory practices.

She also urged the government to provide friendlier channels for victims to file complaints, so that they would be encouraged to fight for their rights.

(By Chen Wen-ting, Chang Ming-hsuan and Y.F. Low)
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Employee loyalty weakens in Taiwan: survey

Employee loyalty weakens in Taiwan: survey

2014/11/21 18:59:06

Taipei, Nov. 21 (CNA) The loyalty of workers in Taiwan toward their employers has shown signs of weakening, as many of them are unsatisfied with pay and benefits, according to the results of a survey released Friday.

104 Job Bank, one of Taiwan's leading online recruitment agencies, said the loyalty score fell sharply to 44 points from 56 points recorded in a similar survey conducted last year.

The online job bank said that the fall in the loyalty score means that more employees want to quit whenever a better job opening emerges.

104 Job Bank noted that salary plays a big role in employee loyalty, adding that employers should offer pay raises to prevent their workers from leaving.

According to the survey, the pay raise hoped for by low-ranking employees averaged NT$3,869 (US$125), while 53 percent were hoping for a raise ranging between NT$3,000 and NT$5,000.

Mid-level employees said they hoped for a pay raise of NT$9,516, with 48.8 percent of them saying that an ideal pay raise could range between NT$5,000 and NT$10,000, the survey indicates.

The results show that high-ranking employees said an ideal pay raise would average NT$29,654, with 40.6 percent of them hoping for NT$10,000-NT$30,000 as a pay hike, and 33.2 percent of them hoping for NT$30,000-50,000 more.

In addition to pay raises, the survey results show that employees would like their employers to have a fairer mechanism for calculating performance bonuses.

The survey was conducted between July 1 and Sept. 30, targeting employees aged 20-59. It collected 1,359 valid samples, with a confidence level of 95 percent and a gin of error of plus or minus 2.66 percentage points. 

(By Wu Ching-chun and Frances Huang)
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Labor ministry warns employers of penalty for denying maternity leave

2014/11/21 17:25:05

Taipei, Nov. 21 (CNA) Employers who refuse workers' requests for menstrual or maternity leave may be subject to a maximum fine of NT$300,000 (US$9,702), the Ministry of Labor warned Friday.

The names of the offenders may also be made public, the ministry said, advising workers to call its complaint hotline 0800-085-151 to report any related violations.

The ministry made the statements after the Legislative Yuan earlier in the day passed amendments to the Act of Gender Equality in Employment, which stipulate, among other new regulations, that female workers are allowed five paid leave days for prenatal health checks.

The amendments also allow female workers to take three days of menstrual leave with half pay, which is a change from the previous no-pay rule.

Male workers, meanwhile, are now eligible to a maximum five days paid leave, instead of just three, at the time of their children's birth, according to the new regulations. 

(By Chang Ming-hsuan and Y.F. Low)
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