Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) yesterday said that some of the campaign pledges President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) made about the rights of workers have not been fulfilled yet, and vowed to continue to work toward the promised goals.
The Ministry of Labor needs to be honest about why the government has not been able to deliver on Ma’s pledges, Jiang said at the Cabinet’s weekly meeting, adding that “we can only hope that our fellow workers across the nation can understand” why the promises have not been met.
At the meeting, Deputy Minister of Labor Chen I-min (陳益民) reported on his review of the government’s implementation of labor policies based on Ma’s campaign platform.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The policies that are not being fully carried out as they should have left contingent workers — those hired by dispatch companies, fixed or short-term hires, part-time employees, and the predominantly migrant labor force of domestic workers and caregivers — unprotected, Chen said.
Chen said that the government has also failed to push the unemployment rate down to the 3 percent level Ma promised in 2008.
Of the 414 campaign pledges made by the president, the ministry has been in charge of 36 and of these, 31 have been fully implemented, while five have yielded partial results, Chen told the Cabinet meeting.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Although a policy has been put in place limiting the number of dispatch workers at a company or a government agency to less than 3 percent of the total workforce, complementary legislation still needs to be drafted to effectively rein in the overuse of dispatch workers and help protect them from exploitation, the deputy minister said.
Chen added that the ministry has been working to enact a law ensuring that part-time workers receive protection in terms of basic wages, welfare and other employment conditions, so these are made equivalent to those afforded to full-time employees because the rules that are meant to guarantee these labor rights contained in the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) seem to be ineffective in preventing violations of limits on the number of working hours employees can be given.
The lack of labor rights protection for domestic workers and caregivers is another problem the ministry must address, particularly in regard to minimum wage, overtime pay, limits on the amount of days worked, break entitlements and vacations, Chen said.
As more than 10,000 workers took to the streets yesterday demanding better working conditions, Jiang said that the government is willing to listen to their requests and continue to adjust its policies to better protect the rights and interests of all the nation’s workers.
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