At the end of last year, the legislature passed an amendment to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) with the aim of instituting a five-day workweek, while still providing a degree of flexibility so that workers who want to work six days a week can earn more money by doing so.
The new system of a five-day workweek with one fixed day off and one flexible rest day every seven days is still at the guidance stage and is not being strictly enforced until the latter half of this year.
Unexpectedly, this worker-friendly measure has met with a strong backlash.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) originally called for an inflexible system of two fixed days off per week, but now it has turned around and is accusing the “one fixed day off and one flexible rest day” system of causing both employers and employees to lose out.
Some KMT governed counties and cities have even let it be known that they are to passively resist the new law by not complying with it.
Employers are pressuring the Ministry of Labor to relax the regulations governing things like distorted and extended work hours because they want to avoid paying overtime for work done on rest days. Many legislators have been lobbied by employers who want implementation of the measures to be delayed.
Even some people in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are showing signs of softening their stance.
One legislator has even proposed calculating combined overtime pay over a year. If this “big pool of overtime pay” idea takes hold, some workers might end up getting no overtime pay at all.
Many objections to the “one fixed day off and one flexible rest day” system are not based on reality.
Last year, the basic workweek was cut to 40 hours, but many employers have not implemented this rule, while employees are unaware of their rights.
As the government starts to strengthen its labor inspections, the violations it discovers do not even comply with the old system, never mind the new one. Moreover, the failure to bring in complementary measures when work hours were first shortened has led to employers finding loopholes.
For example, if employees work for seven hours on each of their five regular workdays, as long as they are assigned to work for no more than five hours on the sixth day, their employer does not have to pay them overtime.
To avoid paying overtime on the sixth day, some firms employ atypical workers on that day instead of regular staff, simply do not open for business or accept fewer orders.
In the latter situation, a company’s competitiveness is the problem, because it cannot cope with increases in human resources and management costs, but rather depend on sweatshop labor conditions.
Meanwhile, some workers have complained that they now earn less than before the amendment was passed because their boss does not want them to work overtime on the sixth day.
However, they are now getting an extra four days off each per month, so they can look for part-time work to do on those days if they want.
The controversy is very similar to that which took place in 2000, when regular work time was reduced to 84 hours every two weeks. Both controversies erupted at a time when inexperienced DPP politicians had just taken over the reins of government and both involved a reduction in work hours that was beneficial to workers, but had resulted in an unprecedented backlash from employers.
In 2000, the DPP originally reached an agreement with the two sides — employees and employers — to first reduce the workweek from 48 to 44 hours, then cut it to 40 hours later on. However, the KMT, which held the majority of seats in the legislature, went out of its way to obstruct the agreement, so that workers ended up getting an unexpectedly favorable deal of 84 work hours every two weeks.
Although there was only a difference of two hours each week, the DPP tried to get this decision overturned by raising the specter of businesses moving offshore and saying that the KMT would be to blame if that happened. This in turn provoked a widespread backlash from labor groups.
In hindsight, the 84-hour reform, along with the earlier implementation of two days off per week for civil servants, had beneficial results in that the increase in leisure time spurred the development of the domestic tourism industry. Guesthouses started to thrive as the nation entered the post-industrial age.
These changes took place 17 years ago in a political landscape where the opposition party had more legislative seats than the governing party. Finding itself in charge of the nation for the first time, the DPP all too quickly abandoned its promises to bring about reform.
Today, by contrast, the DPP has full control of the executive and legislative branches of government, and it must take full responsibility because the opposition party’s opportunistic twists and turns no longer have much effect.
If the government gives in to the pressure from employers and makes further concessions regarding extended and distorted work hours, it will cancel out the reformist intention of the “one fixed day off and one flexible rest day” system and the goal of fully implementing two days off per week would fade into the distance.
Ivan Ho is a sociology professor at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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