Railway unions, agency reach truce

NO DISRUPTIONS:：Train drivers agreed to serve the interests of holiday travelers despite their dispute with the Taiwan Railways Administration on safety and staffing

By Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter, with CNA

Tue, Feb 17, 2015 - Page 1

Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) train drivers yesterday agreed to continue normal operations during the Lunar New Year holiday after securing promises that the agency would improve safety facilities at railway crossings and increase railway personnel.

The negotiations were held after the National Train Drivers’ Association launched a protest against the TRA for what the union called the agency’s failure to improve railway crossings and address a staff shortage.

Instead of striking, drivers reduced their speed at every railway crossing on their routes. The association threatened to do so during the Lunar New Year holiday as well if the TRA continued to ignore their requests.

In talks with TRA Director-General Chou Yung-hui (周永暉), representatives from the TRA Workers’ Union and the association said that they would not disrupt holiday travel and would ensure that travelers’ interests are protected.

Whether the TRA’s management will fulfill its promises to the employees remains to be seen, but the drivers would make sure that travelers arrive home safely for the holiday, association leader Lin Tsung-chi (林聰吉) said.

In related news, the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) yesterday said that it would schedule extra trains during the Lunar New Year holiday to cater to the large number of travelers expected during the six-day period.

Rail bookings for today and tomorrow indicate high demand, on the southbound route in particular, the THSRC said.

Additional trains will operate on those days to get travelers to their destinations in time for New Year’s Eve celebrations, the company said.

The extra services start this afternoon, with four high-speed trains departing from Taipei and stopping at all stations — Banciao, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Chiayi and Tainan — en route to Zuoying in Kaohsiung, the THRSC said.

The additional trains are to depart Taipei at 1:24pm, 2:24pm, 6:24pm and 8:24pm on the two-hour trip to Kaohsiung. They are coded 2665, 2773, 2775 and 2777, it said.

Tomorrow, Lunar New Year’s Eve, one additional train coded 2665 is to depart Taipei at 11:24am, stopping at all of the stations on the southbound route, it said.

There will be no reserved seats on the extra trains, which means that passengers can sit where they wish, or stand if there are no available seats, the THSRC said.

The Lunar New Year holiday runs from Feb. 18 to Feb. 23 this year.

Wobbly City - March 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 enjoyment and 

information. This series documents the development of the IWW in New York City.

Solidarity!

Train drivers threaten to slow down in protest

WORK PROTEST:To highlight their safety and schedule concerns, drivers said that starting today they will slow down at every railway crossing on their routes

By Lin Chia-chi and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer and CNA

Trains are seen at a station in Taitung on Sept. 25 last year.

Photo: Wang Hsiu-ting, Taipei Times

Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) train drivers are launching a protest today after their demands for improvements to railroad crossing safety systems and working conditions were not met, National Train Drivers’ Association leader Lin Tsung-chi (林聰吉) said.

The protest will begin when the first trains of the day set off, with the 700 to 800 drivers on duty slowing down before every crossing, he said, adding that the protests will continue until the union’s demands are met.

While last week’s TransAsia Airways (復興航空) crash in Taipei has raised concerns about a shortage of qualified pilots, train drivers say they are under pressure from new work schedules and staff shortages.

The decision by the drivers comes at the worst possible time of the year for the railway operator, as the annual Lunar New Year holiday — which begins on Wednesday — means trains will be packed before and during the holiday.

The association said the TRA has seen a record number of passengers in recent years with the introduction of new trains, including the Taroko, the Puyuma and the 800 series, which have slashed travel times.

However, the lack of changes to railway crossings, routes and signs, along with new trains and new drivers’ schedules — often a reversal of the usual day-night cycle — have created a great deal of work and stress for the drivers, the association said.

Aging equipment jeopardizes transportation safety, and such risks have been heightened by overworked drivers who are too tired to react quickly to problems on the track, it said.

It highlighted one recent incident in which a crossing gate rose too early, and several cars and motorbikes were nearly hit by a passing train.

The agency said the proposed driver slowdown would severely hamper Lunar New Year travel plans, given that its trains use 463 railway crossings around the island of Taiwan.

For example, it would take a Tzuchiang-class (自強號) train an additional 20 seconds if its speed dropped from 110kph to 60kph at every crossing, meaning that a train from Keelung to Kaohsiung, which goes through 213 railway crossings, would arrive in Kaohsiung an hour later than scheduled, the TRA said.

Such a delay would then have a ripple effect on the schedules of subsequent trains, it said.

Passengers are eligible for refunds if their train arrives more than 45 minutes later than scheduled.

TRA transportation department deputy director Peng Ming-kuang (彭明光) said that the company was looking to hire 289 additional drivers over a five-year period, including 43 by the end of this year.

The company has already hired 153 more workers to maintain railway-crossing safety, Peng said.

My Opinion: Sacrificial Sunflower Fools

One writing project I promote is taIWWan blog. I mentioned it in response to Taiwan News in English, a blog by fellow Taichung ex-pat, Courtney Donovan Smith posting about the Sunflower fools who were indicted yesterday. I don’t bother commenting on meaningless bourgeois political news; only Taiwan labor news that affects workers here. "This Stinking Taiwan Kettle of Fish” (http://taiwwan.blogspot.tw/2014/03/this-stinking-taiwan-kettle-of-fish.html) in taIWWan Blog was about that. 

The unfortunate protesters that shot their youthful loads are in deep trouble now for their naivety. Their fervor was misplaced. It should have been for good jobs in Taiwan and a living wage. However, the government will not help "Sunflower" protester-workers; a living wage cannot be gotten from protests to the top-down; those who aren't interested in organizing themselves into labor unions are wasting their breath.

The 119 indicted in the so-called "Sunflower Movement" protests, wasted their futures in meaningless protests that got nowhere and helped no one except the police who could fine-tune their reactions to the next useless student demonstration. I shouldn't say “meaningless” protests. The protesters, encouraged and advised by certain clandestine agent provocateurs in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), were the icing on the cake of Kuomintang defeat in the November 2014 elections. They did for the DPP youth vote what appointing washed up death metal egotist Freddy Lim “Youth Outreach Coordinator” couldn't for Frank Shieh in the 2008 presidential election defeat to Ma Ying-Jeou.

 The DPP has learned to use the youth as sacrificial lambs for their own pro-American neo-liberal agenda. They will use it again in 2016 to defeat the KMT in the presidential election, but not because of a lack of KMT freedom to protest; it's the economy. Being "Anti-Chinese Mainland" is now an American-inspired DPP ruse, a flip-flop from the old days when the KMT claimed the "Three Principles of the People" would overthrow Communist China. 

There is no “lesser of two evils” in a choice between Chinese and American power in Taiwan. The working people must have the power, and there is only one way to get it: clandestinely through direct action in the workplace. 

After seventy-eight years of the United States de-facto colonization of Taiwan, a “Free China” is still free only for big business interests. There is the same lack of democracy here, though more transparently anti-union, than there would be in a Chinese power take-over. "Reunification" is not the answer, either, in the short-run. 

Until the youth of Taiwan get off their skinny asses and start educating, agitating, and organizing themselves into workers' unions, wages in Taiwan will continue to tumble down to Mainland Chinese levels until working here or there is interchangeable in wages, already at the level it was in Taiwan sixteen years ago. A Chinese worker’s salary in some cities has already caught up to the Taiwan worker’s salary. 

For a family in Taiwan or China to survive, fighting for independent union rights is the only way out. 

For One Big Union!
Solidarity Forever!

Protesters rally in support of ‘Sunflower 119’

‘POLITICAL PURGE’:Protesters said the government was using the judiciary as its hatchet man and it was unfair to accuse Sunflowers of violence but not the police

By Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

Protesters demonstrate in front of the Executive Yuan in Taipei yesterday against the decision to indict 119 individuals in connection with the Sunflower movement protests in March last year.

Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times.

Members of dozens of civic groups and about a dozen of the 119 people this week indicted for their activities during the Sunflower movement protests yesterday demonstrated outside the Executive Yuan against the prosecutors’ decision.

The protesters criticized the government over “abuse of prosecution power” slamming what they said is its failure to hold the police accountable for the violence of officers during the Sunflower protests in March and April last year.

They accused President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration of launching a political purge and said the judicial system was acting as the government’s hatchet man.

One of the 119, Huang Yu-fen (黃郁芬), said the accused are not afraid to shoulder legal responsibilities arising from their occupation of the legislative main chamber, as the action was a legitimate response for citizens to a dysfunctional political system.

“However, as about 80 percent of the 119 indicted are being prosecuted for breaking into the Executive Yuan, why is it that police officers, who clearly used excessive force [on the night of the Executive Yuan compound sit-in] against peaceful demonstrators have not been prosecuted?” she said.

The charges filed against protesters include “instigating others to commit crime” and called some “the masterminds,” — two terms Restoration of Taiwan Social Justice chief executive Lin Yu-lun (林于倫) said better describe Ma, “as he is the mastermind who instigated our protests and activities.”

He held up enlarged photographs clearly showing the face of a police officer as he wielded a baton.

“The photos have been shown by media outlets for months, but still the officer cannot be found,” he said.

The groups said the violence was reminiscent of the White Terror era, as nothing is known about the perpetrators, only about the victims of state violence.

Amnesty International Taiwan director Bo Tedards said that Amnesty does not generally get involved in domestic political affairs, “but it should be a basic human right for people to say yes or no.”

He called on the government not to ignore human rights, and said that the protesters should not be criminally indicted.

“Just as we [Amnesty International] maintain a neutral and fair stance, we hope this country’s judicial system does the same, but it is regrettable that the Taipei district prosecutors’ office has one-sidedly indicted the protesters but prosecuted none on the police side for the 324 [March 24] violence,” Tedards said.

Another of the activists charged, Wang Yi-kai (王奕凱), slammed Executive Yuan spokesperson Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) comments about pleading “tolerance” by young protesters.

“‘Tolerance’ is not a word that should be used by perpetrators, but by their victims,” he said.

Calling the prosecution “judicial hunt and murder,” Wang said the protesters have been discriminated against in their work and academic lives.

A photograph of the Sunflower movement was included and the protests were mentioned in last year’s UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary-general Chiu E-ling (邱伊翎) said.

“The report said that the current period is marked by a ‘democratic recession,’ in which governments are growing more repressive and ‘space to exercise the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association is shrinking,’” Chiu said. “The Executive Yuan has called the protesters ‘the shame of democracy,’ but I think it deserves the description more.”
Wellington Koo (顧立雄), one of the lawyers volunteering to represent the indicted people said the movement was an “act done to uphold social justice” rather than a “crime” and that the volunteer lawyers would continue to help the protesters prove this in court.

Foreign workers in Taiwan number over 550,000

2015/02/08 12:30:00

Taipei, Feb. 8 (CNA) There were 552,000 foreign workers in Taiwan as of the end of 2014, accounting for 68.9 percent of the number of all foreign nationals in the country, according to Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior.

A little more than 800,000 foreign nationals were residing in Taiwan at the end of last year, with 82 percent of them coming from Southeast Asian countries, ministry statistics revealed. Some 660,000 held a resident visa, while the rest were residing in Taiwan on other kinds of visas, such as visitor visas.

The number of foreigners residing in Taiwan overall was up by 76,000 compared with the number recorded a year ago, due mainly to an increase of 68,000 foreign laborers who entered Taiwan on resident visas.

Workers from Indonesia at 41.6 percent made up the bulk of foreign residents, followed by 27.3 percent from Vietnam and 20.2 percent from the Philippines.

Most foreign nationals reside in Taoyuan City, New Taipei City and Taipei City, the same tallies showed.

Meanwhile, around 43,000 foreign spouses have yet to get Taiwanese citizenship, with 36.6 percent of them from Vietnam and 14.6 percent from Thailand.

Outcry over grounding of CAL staff

By Lii Wen  /  Staff reporter

China Airlines flight attendant Steven Chang, center, has his head shaved yesterday during a news conference outside the company’s offices in Taipei to protest being grounded by the airline — along with four other employees — for their actions at a protest on Thursday last week at the same location.

Photo: Liao Chen-huei

China Airlines’ (CAL) decision this week to remove several union representatives from flight duties for speaking at a demonstration last week has sparked fury among the public.

As of press time last night, 16,000 netizens had signed an online petition to boycott the airline until the decision is revoked, while a petition launched by overseas Taiwanese students calling for a boycott of CAL for Lunar New Year trips back to Taiwan had drawn 400 supporters.

The labor unions of four airlines operating in Hong Kong — Cathay Pacific, Dragon Air, British Airways and Jardine Aviation — have expressed solidarity with the China Airline employees.

CAL grounded four flight attendants — Betty Hung (洪蓓蒂), Bridgit Su (蘇盈蓉), Steven Chang (張書元) and Anderson Shen (沈家源) — as well as Taoyuan Pilot’s Union president Yang Kuang-hai (楊光海) for their “emotional behavior” at a protest outside the airline’s office in downtown Taipei on Thursday last week, which the company said went against the “professional conduct” expected of its flight personnel.

The protest, which drew more than 1,000 people, was against the airline’s reduction in employee year-end bonuses.

CAL said the five would be removed from flight duties for one month, but would be paid their monthly salaries.

However, labor activists said depriving the employees of their full flight bonuses and travel reimbursements meant they would actually lose pay.

At a news conference outside the company’s offices in Taipei yesterday, Chang had his head shaved to protest what he said was “lawless and outrageous” punishment that violated the Labor Union Act (工會法).

He said the other three flight attendants have been barred from taking leave and ordered to take anger-management courses.

“They can stop me from flying, but they cannot stop my heart from soaring,” Chang said, saying that it was a union representative’s responsibility to “speak the truth” about the company’s “inept managerial decisions” and overworking of its employees.

Other CAL employees have protested the company’s decision, with many flight attendants attaching yellow ribbons to their luggage as a sign of support for their grounded colleagues.

The Taoyuan Pilot’s Union secretariat said Yang has been kept alone since last week’s demonstration and reportedly had to punch a time clock each time he wanted to go to a restroom.

The Greater Taoyuan Department of Labor said in a statement that China Airlines was fined a total of NT$2,290,000 (US$72,800) for repeated violations of working hour limits last year, adding that labor officials would aid the five employees in negotiations with airline.

A Taiwanese graduate student in Berlin surnamed Cheng (鄭), who helped launch the overseas petition, said CAL’s negligence of its employees’ working conditions prompted questions about its flight security.

He said the petition had attracted support from Taiwanese students in many countries as well as other overseas Taiwanese.

Worker numbers drop as Taiwan ages, council says

Staff writer, with CNA

Mon, Feb 02, 2015 - Page 3

The nation’s working population could shrink to just 51 percent of the total population by the end of 2060, as the number of people leaving the workforce has reached 180,000 people a year, the latest statistics from the National Development Council show.

The nation’s declining birthrate — one of the lowest in the world, the low participation rate of middle-aged workers and a continued outflow of skilled personnel are contributing to demographic changes that mean each senior citizen is supported by just 1.2 working-age people, the council’s statistics show.

The current labor force — which is defined as people aged 15 to 64 — makes up 74 percent of the nation’s 23.37 million people, while seniors aged 65 and over account for 12 percent.

However, the council estimates that the elderly population will more than triple before 2061 — to 38 percent of the total — and the workforce will drop to half of the population.

At present, each senior citizen has the support of 6.2 working-age people, but that will plummet to 1.2 over the next 44 years, the council said.

Council labor specialist Hsieh Chia-yi (謝佳宜) said another trend is for young people to delay their entry to the labor force by extending their studies, even as more middle-aged workers retire relatively early.

The labor market’s problem is worsened by the outflow of highly skilled workers seeking opportunities abroad while Taiwan attracts mostly only basic-level laborers, Hsieh said.

The central government hopes to help remedy the problems by boosting the total labor participation from the current 58 percent to 60 percent in 2020 and encouraging more women to work to raise their percentage of workers from 50 percent to 53 percent, Hsieh said.

However, these measures alone might not be enough to hold off the clouds over Taiwan’s demographic makeup.

Other initiatives include diversifying the job market while trying to convince young people to get a job before seeking a master’s degree, which Hsieh said could help resolve the problem of advanced degree holders who lack real workplace experience.

The council has also talked about creating “friendly work environments” to entice Taiwanese to return from abroad, though it did not provide specific measures.

National Development Council Deputy Minister Kao Shien-quey (高仙桂) advocates more flexible hours, including flexible vacation time, to encourage women to return to the workforce after having children.

Whatever measures it adopts, the council will have its work cut out, as the nation moves closer to becoming an aged society — a point that could come as early as next year.

The population is expected to peak at 32.5 million or 23.6 million between 2019 and 2026, and Taiwan could become a “super-aged” society in which the elderly make up 20 percent by 2025, council estimates show.

The council has recommended developing “smart” industries based on automation to reduce the reliance on a shrinking labor force and keep the nation’s manufacturing dominated economy running even without people at the helm.