With the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) under increasing pressure in the face of large-scale layoffs and a rising unemployment rate, CLA Minister Wang Ju-hsuan (王如玄) said yesterday in the Legislative Yuan that the ministry has come up with a new plan to help stabilize the employment market and upgrade the professional skills of workers.
The “plan to enhance employment skills in the short term,” is also aimed at discouraging enterprises from laying off workers.
Under the program, enterprises that provide on-the-job training courses for their employees would be eligible to apply for subsidies of between NT$950,000 (US$28,788) and NT$1.9 million over a period of six months, depending on the size of the business.
Workers who participate in the program will also be entitled to a monthly subsidy of up to NT$10,000 over a maximum period of six months.
The subsidy will be provided to businesses on condition they maintain their workforce size, do not lay off any of the employees attending the training courses and pay their staff at least the minimum wage of NT$17,280 per month.
The CLA estimates that around 5,600 enterprises will apply to join the program, which means that the total number of subsidized workers will be 168,000. This will require a budget of around NT$15.97 billion, the CLA said.
“We expect that the government’s plans to expand domestic demand will help boost the job market next year,” Wang said when asked by legislators if unemployment would surge again once the subsidy period expires.
The government has launched a NT$500 billion plan over four years to expand domestic demand and enhance infrastructure development, which is expected to boost the employment rate and GDP.
In a coordinated effort, the Cabinet-level CLA launched a program in October to subsidize enterprises and governmental units that hire people who have been unemployed for a long time for up to six months.
To date, 13,518 people have been hired under the program, the CLA said.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is