The labor law amendments could improve working conditions, with only limited impact on consumer prices, the Cabinet said yesterday, rebutting what business leaders said were the side effects of the “lose-lose legislation.”
Defending amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), which stipulates a five-day workweek and higher overtime pay, the Executive Yuan said the legislation is a major improvement in general working conditions, while the impact on businesses is acceptable to labor-intensive industries.
Chinese National Federation of Industries secretary-general Tsai Lien-sheng (蔡練生) on Tuesday said the amendments were a “lose-lose” legislation that hurt employers, workers and consumers with increased personnel costs, lower salaries due to fewer working hours and rising consumer prices.
Photo: CNA
“That employers quibble with employees [over overtime pay] is what makes it a lose-lose situation,” Vice Premier Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀) said, calling on businesses to take care of their employees.
Two major goals of the amendments — to reduce working hours and unify the nation’s leave schemes — have been achieved, although there are side effects, such as a rise in operating costs for labor-intensive businesses.
The legislation hardly affects companies that have already adopted a five-day workweek, which accounts for about 65 percent of the workforce, Lin said.
. Photo: Tsai Wen-chu, Taipei Times
For employers of the other 35 percent of workers, they are likely to see a tolerable increase in personnel costs.
“The public has misunderstood the legislation and believed that businesses would have to pay considerably more in overtime pay, but that is not the case,” Lin said.
The amendments would increase the personnel and operational costs of the manufacturing industry by 1.5 percent and 0.1 percent respectively, National Development Council Deputy Minister Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said.
As for the service industry, a labor-intensive industry that is more susceptible to the new overtime pay requirements, personnel and operational costs would only increase by 2.1 percent and 0.22 percent respectively, Kung added.
The nation will experience “very mild inflation,” with this year’s inflation estimated at 1.26 percent to 1.46 percent, which is “fairly acceptable,” central bank Governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南) said, adding that the central bank would not activate regulatory measures until inflation reaches 2 percent.
The consumer price index is estimated to rise by between 0.2 percent to 0.4 percent this year with the implementation of the legislation and the nation is likely to see a low and stable rise in consumer prices, Perng added.
The Fair Trade Commission is to monitor whether businesses are making coordinated price adjustments to manipulate the market. No such activity has been evident in restaurant prices, it said.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
RSS