The government’s amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) last week passed their third reading at the legislature. In response, a netizen compiled a list of 18 food and beverage vendors that “used the excuse of increased labor costs” during the implementation of the government’s original “one fixed day off and one flexible rest day” policy as justification for raising their product prices.
The netizen, who posted the list on academic bulletin board Professional Technology Temple, asked whether the companies would now decrease their prices, as the original amendment had been reversed.
The vendors responded that they would not be adjusting their prices “at this time.”
Clearly, these companies are fleecing Taiwanese consumers.
There seems to be an iron-clad rule in Taiwan to explain the above phenomenon: Once a price goes up, it can never come back down. On the one hand this is because businesses do not easily relinquish an opportunity to make more profits; but, more crucially, Taiwanese consumers readily submit to price hikes, and are unwilling to rally together to challenge mercenary business practices.
This means that Taiwanese companies can get away with blue murder and are virtually free to set prices as they please. The passivity of Taiwanese means that they will always be at a disadvantage and are cash cows for greedy businesspeople.
We need look no further than Japan for the answer: In 2001, the first case of mad cow disease was reported in Japan. The Japanese government issued an order to the effect that it would purchase all domestically produced beef and have it destroyed to avoid a panic over food safety.
Established dairy producer Snow Brand Milk Products attempted to pass off the entirety of its imported New Zealand beef inventory as domestic beef and sold it to the Japanese government and received as much as ¥14.6 million (US$131,838 at the current exchange rate) in government subsidies.
Less than two years before, a Hokkaido-based plant belonging to the same company had sold fresh milk infected with staphylococcus as low-fat milk, poisoning more than 15,000 people in the Kansai region and causing a public outcry.
With the beef scandal on top of this, Japanese had had enough and decided that the time for action had arrived. They refused to buy the brand’s products and the media refused to accept advertising commissions from the company.
In the end, the 75-year-old brand’s reputation lay in tatters and, unable to recover from public anger, it was left with no choice but to file for bankruptcy.
This is a classic example of the power of numbers, something Taiwanese have never really understood. That is why whenever there is a food safety scandal in the nation, the majority of Taiwanese continue as if nothing has happened, despite calls to boycott the offending party.
It is also why manufacturers are not afraid of the consequences and try to get away with whatever they can.
If food safety offenders have no fear of consequences, why should companies refrain from increasing prices whenever they see fit? After all, if companies see Taiwanese as essentially lambs for the slaughter, it comes as no surprise that they would act without mercy.
Unless Taiwanese are willing to stand up and make an example of a company that wantonly increases prices with a boycott, then little is likely to change.
Hsu Yu-fang is a professor of Chinese literature at National Dong Hwa University.
Translated by Edward Jones and Paul Cooper
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