Although Taiwanese workers are used to pie-in-the-sky labor policies, it is still frustrating that they remain out of reach. Rather than continuing to call on employers to raise salaries, the government should set an example by immediately introducing a five-day work week, a policy that has been delayed for a decade.
The International Labour Organization capped working hours at 40 hours a week in the international “Forty-Hour Week Convention” in 1935, 76 years ago. The world’s advanced economies have maintained a five-day work week policy for years, and even Taiwan’s rapidly growing neighbors China and South Korea have capped legal working hours at 40 hours a week.
Back in 2000, Taiwanese workers launched a working hour revolution, which led to the introduction of 84 work hours a fortnight beginning in 2001, although they failed to achieve the goal of a five-day workweek.
According to data from the US Department of Labor, the hourly cost of hiring a worker in Taiwan’s manufacturing sector was only US$8.15 an hour in 2007.
This places Taiwan second from the bottom among the 21 industrialized countries in the survey. Mexico was the only country where labor was cheaper than in Taiwan. The cost of hiring a Taiwanese worker was only about half that of a Japanese or Hong Kong worker. From 1997 to 2007, Taiwan’s annual hourly wage grew a mere 1.4 percent, once again second to last, only ahead of Japan.
The US data also showed that before Taiwan reduced its working hours, its unit labor cost (ULC) in the manufacturing sector rose 0.2 percent from 1990 to 2000. After the cuts, the ULC dropped 3.8 percent from 2000 to 2007 and another 7.4 percent from 2008 to 2009. A comparison with the world’s 16 major industrialized countries shows that Taiwan’s ULC after 2000 is the lowest among all countries surveyed. Clearly, cutting the number of working hours did not raise labor costs as the industrial sector likes to claim.
Data from the Council of Labor Affairs show that about 60 percent of Taiwanese workers in the private sector work five days a week, enjoying two days off in accordance with company regulations. A look at the companies based on their size shows that 46.92 percent of workers in companies with 29 or fewer employees have two days off a week. In companies with 500 workers or more, more than 70 percent of all workers have two days off.
The implementation of a five-day work week policy can boost the leisure industry, increase economic mobility and allow workers to create a balance between work life and family life. It will also allow workers to recharge their batteries and make a greater contribution to their companies, reduce workplace fatigue and promote industrial upgrading — not to mention that it might boost the birth rate and therefore the future labor force.
During his election campaign in 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) pledged to reduce the number of working hours and to promote a balance between work and family. After more than three years in office, he has presented no such concrete plans, although the time is ripe for the nation to implement such a policy.
Since it is the right thing to do, why not launch it in the last six months of his presidency?
The five-day work week has already been delayed for 10 years. Will Taiwan’s workers have to continue lagging behind and wait another 10 long years?
Abbie Shih is the deputy chief of the policy department of Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS