Former employees of Radio Corp of America (RCA) burst into tears as a court yesterday ordered that the now-defunct electronics company and its owners pay NT$564.45 million (US$18.11 million) in damages to 445 former workers and their families.
With pink banners around their foreheads saying “RCA workers never give up,” about 60 members of the RCA Self-Help Association cheered their victory after the Taipei District Court handed down the ruling on the decade-long legal battle in what has been described as the worst industrial disaster in the nation’s history.
“During my time at RCA, we were often exposed to organic solvents. No one knew whether the substances were hazardous to our health,” said Huang Chun-tiao (黃春窕), 56, who was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer after working at RCA for 18 years.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
According to the verdict, the defendants asserted that the plaintiff had failed to prove that the health issues resulted from exposure to environmental factors, but judges opined that the causal relationship could be determined with “a reasonable degree of medical certainty” to be the toxicity of the organic solvents.
RCA operated in Taiwan from 1970 to 1992, with plants in then-Taoyuan County, Hsinchu County, and Yilan County, employing tens of thousands of people in the production of color TVs and other electronics products using up to 31 kinds of organic solvent, including trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethene, exposure to which increases the risk of cancer, the verdict said.
In 1998, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) found that the site of the former RCA plant in Taoyuan was contaminated with chlorinated organic solvents and other toxic chemicals used in its production after the company had illegally dug wells to discharge the toxic waste, which contaminated tap water used by its workers and nearby residents.
The 7.2 hectare plant has been designated by the EPA as a site of “permanent contamination.”
During the period between 1992 when RCA shut down its plants in Taiwan and 2004 when 519 members of the association filed the civil lawsuit, more than 1,300 of RCA’s former employees have been diagnosed with various types of cancer, with 221 of them dying, the verdict said.
A year after the takeover of RCA by General Electric (GE) in 1986, the firm was sold to Thomson Consumer Electronics, the US subsidiary of France-based Thomson Multimedia, which is now called Technicolor SA.
The RCA Self-Help Association had sought damages of NT$2.7 billion from RCA, GE and Thomson, but the court absolved GE of any blame, a decision over which Joseph Lin (林永頌), the lead lawyer for the association, expressed regret.
Lin thanked the judges for determining that the effects of the pollutants caused the diseases, a rare decision in a Taiwanese case.
The defendants have the right to appeal the Taipei District Court’s verdict.
EFFICIENCY: The rules for Philippine arrivals were revised after 17.6% of arrivals with symptoms tested positive, compared with 0.7% of those with no symptoms Starting today, Chinese spouses who hold a reunion permit can apply to enter Taiwan and travelers without symptoms from the Philippines do not need to be tested for COVID-19 upon arrival, but are to be tested after a 14-day quarantine, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that from today, Chinese who are married to a Taiwanese citizen and hold a reunion permit can apply to the National Immigration Agency for entry into Taiwan. Chinese who are married to a foreign national and hold an accompanied reunion permit
PENGHU INSPECTION: Taiwan cannot let its enemies strut around in its airspace, Tsai said, one day after a Chinese spokesman denied a median line exists in the Taiwan Strait Following China’s assertion on Monday that there is no “median line” in the Taiwan Strait, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday pledged to defend the nation’s airspace during a visit to an air force base in Penghu, saying that Taiwan cannot allow others to flex their military muscle in its territorial airspace. Tsai praised the “heroic performance” of the pilots of the Indigenous Defense Fighters who have been intercepting Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force planes in recent days. “I have a lot of confidence in you. As soldiers of the Republic of China [ROC], how could we let enemies strut
CONSOLIDATION? Taiwan Thinktank deputy executive-general Doong Sy-chi said Beijing’s intimidation tactics are further alienating those who identify as Chinese Only 2 percent of respondents to a poll on constitutional amendments and national identity identified as Chinese, while 62.6 percent identified as Taiwanese, the Taiwan Thinktank said yesterday. Legislators have proposed amendments to the Additional Articles of the Constitution (憲法增修條文), which would change the definition of the nation’s territory, remove the Taiwan Provincial Government as an entity, prioritize the use of “Taiwan” for national groups at international events, and remove restrictions on defining the national emblem, national flag and national anthem. The poll showed that 80.5 percent of respondents agreed that the nation should participate as “Taiwan” at events organized by world
BALANCED DEVELOPMENT: TSMC chairman Mark Liu said the firm is committed to local investment: a third in the north, a third in the center, a third in the south Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that, based on its strategy of balancing capacity, it plans to make northern Taiwan its manufacturing hub for advanced technologies that go beyond 2 nanometers. “As the company is committed to investing in Taiwan, we try to deploy one-third [of our total production capacity] in the north and have one-third each in the center and south” of the nation, TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) told reporters on the sidelines of Semicon Taiwan’s Master Forum in Taipei. TSMC last year reached its goal of deploying capacity equally across those parts
RSS