Vietnamese workers on strike
About 3,000 workers at a Taiwanese shoe factory in Vietnam have gone on strike, demanding higher salaries to help cope with inflation, company officials said yesterday.
“In the factory we have almost 3,000 workers. All of them are on strike,” Joyce Yang, office manager at Emperor Footwear Co (帝王塑膠) in southern Long An Province, said. “They want a salary increase of about 10 percent.”
The strike began on Friday night and was still going yesterday, Yang said, adding that the situation should be back to normal by this evening after talks.
“We may have to increase salaries,” she said, without saying by how much. “But we don’t think it’s a good way to solve the problem.”
Yang said that previous demands for higher pay were met two months ago.
A strike of more than 15,000 workers hit a factory that makes shoes for Nike in Long An earlier this month. Workers also asked for a salary increase.
Strikes are becoming more frequent in Vietnam, where consumer prices rose more than 16 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, including for essentials such as rice.
Most strikes in Vietnam occur in the south, in and around Ho Chi Minh City, but rarely last more than a few days, given that unions remain under the control of the communist authorities.
KMT may deregulate exchange
KMT Legislator Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) said yesterday that her party had proposed to deregulate the foreign currency exchange between the New Taiwan dollar and the yuan as early as July 1.
Under the “small three links” framework, banks in outlying islands Kinmen and Matsu are allowed to trade less than 20,000 yuan (US$2,850), which will be further deregulated to apply to banks in Taiwan by July 1, she said.
To allow banks in Taiwan to trade the yuan, minor legal revisions will have to be made, she said.
Once the new government takes office, more deregulatory policies will be proposed to allow free amount of exchange between the NT dollar and the yuan, the legislator said.
President-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had previously vowed to open up the free flow of the yuan in Taiwan by the end of this year.
Motech shares drop 6.8 percent
Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), Taiwan’s largest maker of solar cells, declined by its daily limit in Taipei trading after profit plunged, missing analysts’ estimates.
Motech fell 6.8 percent to NT$205, the most since Feb. 13, at the close of trade on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, compared with a 0.2 percent drop in the benchmark TAIEX index.
First-quarter net income fell to NT$239 million (US$7.9 million) because the company took a NT$400 million charge for foreign-exchange losses, Taipei-based Motech reported on Friday. The profit was less than half the NT$565 million median of seven analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
“Motech’s profitability will likely stay in a trough,” Darryl Cheng (鄭德榮), an analyst in Taipei for Credit Suisse Group (瑞士信貸), wrote in a report yesterday. The company lacks contracts this and next year, he said.
Cheng cut his price estimate on Motech to NT$244 from NT$255 and maintained a “neutral” rating on the stock.
NT dollar down on greenback
The New Taiwan dollar dropped NT$0.006 to close at NT$30.325 against the greenback on turnover of US$898 million yesterday.
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