The practice of sending workers on unpaid leave has been growing among production companies in Taiwan since October and the job market could see another wave of layoffs in the first quarter, the Internet-based 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) said yesterday.
Ryan Wu (吳睿穎), chief operating officer of 1111 Job Bank, said an online survey conducted recently by his organization showed that 46 percent of office workers had been told to take up to 10 days of unpaid leave each month since October.
The survey showed that office workers sent on unpaid leave have seen their monthly wages reduced by one-third on average.
Some 20 percent have thought of looking for another job and 80 percent appeared to be depressed about the situation, the survey found.
Noting that some enterprises have asked some of their employees to take an additional month of unpaid leave following the Lunar New Year holiday, Wu said it seemed unlikely that the strategy would be dropped by the end of next month, as many people are hoping.
Meanwhile, the latest survey by the Council of Labor Affairs showed that among those enterprises that have a workforce of more than 200 people, 18 percent have resorted to unpaid leave as a means of coping with their difficulties caused by the ongoing global economic financial crisis. It was estimated that more than 200,000 office workers had been affected.
Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) statistics in late December showed that as a result of the practice, 741,000 people were working fewer than 35 hours per week in November, an increase of 205,000 people over October’s total of 536,000.
Other DGBAS figures showed the number of unemployed people in Taiwan totaled 549,000 in December, the highest since October 2003. This represented an increase of 4.64 percent over last October.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained