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
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS