The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a verdict ordering Radio Corp of America (RCA) and its affiliates to pay NT$718.4 million (US$23.7 million) to its former Taiwanese employees and their families.
Yesterday’s ruling increased the compensation from NT$564.45 million in the first ruling in 2015, with stakeholders closely watching the court’s decision in one of the nation’s longest-running legal battles between a major corporation and workers.
RCA, which operated several production plants in Taiwan from 1970 to 1992, was in 1986 taken over by General Electric Co (GE), which later sold it to Thomson Consumer Electronics, the US subsidiary of France-based Thomson Multimedia, which is now called Technicolor SA.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The court included GE, Technicolor and Thomson as defendants, ordering them, along with RCA, to pay compensation to 486 former employees.
In the first ruling, the judges wrote that they were unable to determine whether RCA was a subsidiary of GE, based on RCA’s business registration, and omitted GE as a responsible party.
However, an investigation found that GE took over RCA before selling it to Thomson, which took ownership of an RCA production plant in then-Taoyuan County.
The judges ruled that GE was in control of RCA’s operations in Taiwan during the period in which the workers said chemicals from the plants caused them to develop cancer and other illnesses.
While the plaintiffs were comprised of 486 former employees, yesterday’s ruling said three workers began work at RCA’s Taoyuan plant after 1988, adding that GE would not be required to compensate the three, but would be required to contribute to NT$717.7 million in compensation for the remaining 483 workers.
Members of the RCA Self-Help Association, which represented the workers, yesterday afternoon gathered in front of the High Court’s Taipei branch to hear the decision, smiling and clapping when it was read to them.
They had sought damages of NT$2.7 billion from RCA, GE and Thomson.
RCA operated plants in then-Taoyuan County, as well as Hsinchu and Yilan counties, which employed tens of thousands of people to produce color TVs and other consumer electronics using 31 kinds of organic solvents, including trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethene, exposure to which increases the risk of cancer, the verdict said.
In 1998, the Environmental Protection Administration found that the site of the former RCA plant in then-Taoyuan County was contaminated with chlorinated organic solvents and other toxic chemicals, due to the company illegally digging wells to bury waste, which contaminated tap water used by the workers and nearby residents.
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 the firm’s Taiwanese employees have been diagnosed with various types of cancer, with 221 of them dying, the 2015 ruling said.
GEOPOLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE: The CGA’s nonmilitary role makes it a tool to avert diplomatic issues, an official said, while confirming the donation of a ship to Manila Coast Guard Administration (CGA) ships are scheduled to sail to the Philippines bearing the words “Taiwan Coast Guard” in a high-profile visit in October next year, the first such visit by a Taiwanese maritime law enforcement vessel to the Southeast Asian nation, the agency said yesterday. The CGA also confirmed that it had donated one of its decommissioned patrol vessels to the Philippines in a rare transfer of a retired ship to a nondiplomatic ally. The Republic of China (ROC) Navy last made such a visit in 1974, shortly before the Philippines switched diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China in
‘GLOBAL WARNING’: The infiltration is not just a local problem, as Beijing has been deploying the same tactics worldwide against Western democracies, a report said Between 50,000 and 100,000 Chinese spies are operating in Taiwan, far more than the National Security Bureau’s previous estimate of 5,000, German journalist and author Jurgen Kremb said on Monday. Kremb presented his research, titled “The War of Spies: How China’s Intelligence Services Are Infiltrating Taiwan — and What Europe Must Learn from It,” at a joint event held by the Taiwan offices of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the European Values Center for Security Policy. The report was published in June in the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau’s Prospect & Exploration Monthly (展望與探索月刊). By spies, he said he was referring to informants,
PRICE STABILIZATION: The Ministry of Economic Affairs has urged the legislature to support the Cabinet’s supplementary budget for state-owned energy companies State-owned oil supplier CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) on Saturday announced that it would raise domestic gasoline prices by NT$0.7 (US$0.02) per liter and diesel prices by NT$0.6 per liter this week after international crude oil prices rose above US$100 per barrel last week. Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) yesterday said that it matched CPC’s price adjustments for this week. The decisions end a six-week period during which CPC and Formosa kept fuel prices in Taiwan unchanged. Retail gasoline prices this week would rise to NT$31.2, NT$32.7 and NT$34.7 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively at CPC
WASHINGTON MEETING: Japan’s Hirofumi Takinami said participants rejected the idea that the US should limit its defensive perimeter to the Second Island Chain US and Japanese lawmakers agree that the US must defend the First Island Chain, including Taiwan, and should not fall back to the Second Island Chain, while “a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency and therefore a US-Japan alliance contingency,” media reported after a meeting between officials of the two nations in Washington on Tuesday. A delegation of Japanese lawmakers from the Liberal Democratic Party met with US Senator Thom Tillis, co-chair of the Senate Taiwan Caucus, and US Representative Ami Bera, co-chair of the US Congressional Taiwan caucus, to discuss issues concerning East Asia and the Taiwan Strait. The Japanese and
RSS