The Mid-Autumn Festival holiday was a period of sorrow and mourning for Taiwan's labor movement as Tseng Mao-hsing (
Taiwan's labor movement was born in the era of street demonstrations that followed the lifting of martial law and based on the concept of legal resistance. On one hand, laborers were seeking rights for holidays and overtime pay that had long been stipulated in the Labor Standards Act (勞基法). On the other hand, the grassroots labor unions freed themselves from the party-state and began to organize class mobilization. At that time, a series of strikes raised worker awareness. The newly born labor movement was awe-inspiring as no one knew what workers really wanted and where they were going to lead Taiwan after 40 years of oppression.
In the 1990s, the labor movement gradually became part of the system and fewer radical strikes occurred. "Push" and "pull" factors both influenced this transition of the labor movement. Labor activists were pushed into taking a milder approach after the state apparatus eliminated the radical labor movement, which led to the failures of strikes launched by the Miaoli Bus Co and the Far Eastern Chemical Fiber Plant. Then a series of government attempts to amend legislation and restrict labor rights pulled the labor movement's focus to the legislative agenda.
To a certain extent the labor movement was effective within the system. Within a dozen years, it successfully pressured the government to extend the Labor Standards Act to include the service industry and limited the labor insurance burden on workers to a reasonable proportion. The movement also saw the legalization of trade union confederations, the implementation of democracy in state-run businesses and the passage of the Gender Equality in Employment Act (
However, the established labor movement was also a tamed labor movement. It mobilized fewer members at the grassroots level and their participation served more as a bargaining chip in government talks. The movement adopted strategies that brought political influence.
While its influence has grown, the movement has also become distanced from the majority of workers. With more channels in the system, union officials have gained more career opportunities. They serve as directors and representatives of various groups, members of local labor autonomous councils, members of committees and as legislators-at-large nominated by political parties. It is not hard to see how labor union officials have become distanced from the grassroots level.
More importantly, the established labor movement only lays special emphasis on the rights of state-run business employees and neglects non-government employes, the unemployed, foreign laborers and other groups that are even more disadvantaged.
One conspicuous phenomenon is that more and more of the middle-aged unemployed no longer have anyone speaking for them. They are not protected by labor unions and the labor movement doesn't care too much about their situation. As other labor movement officials began to enter the corridors of government, Tseng was the only one left guarding the radition of street demonstration and preserving traditional grassroots resistance.
Restoring the spirit of the 1980s grassroots resistance will be a challenge that labor movement leaders accustomed to operating within the system must deal with.
Ho Ming-sho is an assistant professor of sociology at Nanhua University.
Translated by Ted Yang
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
A recent scandal involving a high-school student from a private school in Taichung has reignited long-standing frustrations with Taiwan’s increasingly complex and high-pressure university admissions system. The student, who had successfully gained admission to several prestigious medical schools, shared their learning portfolio on social media — only for Internet sleuths to quickly uncover a falsified claim of receiving a “Best Debater” award. The fallout was swift and unforgiving. National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and Taipei Medical University revoked the student’s admission on Wednesday. One day later, Chung Shan Medical University also announced it would cancel the student’s admission. China Medical
Construction of the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Township (恆春) started in 1978. It began commercial operations in 1984. Since then, it has experienced several accidents, radiation pollution and fires. It was finally decommissioned on May 17 after the operating license of its No. 2 reactor expired. However, a proposed referendum to be held on Aug. 23 on restarting the reactor is potentially bringing back those risks. Four reasons are listed for holding the referendum: First, the difficulty of meeting greenhouse gas reduction targets and the inefficiency of new energy sources such as photovoltaic and wind power. Second,
RSS