Officials defend workweek backslide

Wuo insisted that Chen is breaking his campaign promise that sets a 40-hour workweek as a goal, when he cannot even enforce the legislature's decision to shorten the maximum working time to 84 hours over a two-week period.

"Laborers will never accept this deception," Wuo said.

TCTU president Hwang Ching-hsien (黃清賢) accused the government of being "unfair" to workers by putting the blame for industrial emigration and economic slowdown on the workweek issue in order to "curry favor" with industry.

"While the government has been unable to put forth any measure to boost the economy, it is trying to reverse the workweek policy instead. We laborers can never accept that," Hwang said.

Leaders of the KMT, People First Party and New Party caucuses in the legislature reiterated yesterday that they would not support the Executive Yuan's plan to keep the workweek at 44 hours unless it was able to coordinate an agreement with labor groups.

Legislative Yuan speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who is also a vice chairman of the KMT, suggested yesterday that the Executive Yuan try to win the opposition lawmakers' support with sincerity.

Wang said if President Chen is to convince opposition lawmakers, he should openly respond to public doubt as to whether his promise to implement a 40-hour workweek in 2002 is still possible.