About 200 China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) employees yesterday said that they opposed the strike launched by the Taoyuan Union of Pilots, at a protest outside the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in Taipei.
Protesters also questioned the role of union chairwoman Lee Hsin-yen (李信燕), who is an EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) pilot, saying that she should withdraw from negotiations with airline management, as it involves confidential information.
“I was elected through legal procedures to be the chairwoman of the union, which represents CAL and EVA pilots,” Lee said.
Photo: CNA
“I am simply fulfilling my responsibility as the chairwoman, which is to represent its members,” she said.
The employees who protested did so voluntarily and did not receive any instructions from company management, CAL manager Lee Ching-ting (李晶婷) said.
“The union, on the other hand, searched the Internet to identify pilots who defied its order to go on strike. It should stop cyberbullying and face the public honestly instead,” she said.
Ground staff have been working extra hours to help passengers change their tickets, and many were still working yesterday, so they could not attend the protest, Lee Ching-ting said.
Some of the protestors told the Taipei Times that the pilots should be reasonable in their demands.
Pilots do not seem to realize that their demands would impose a huge financial burden on the airline, they said, adding that the strike would also cause the company to lose passengers.
After a previous strike launched by flight attendants in 2016, the company took about six months to resume normal operations, they said.
Pilots should stop the strike and start working immediately, they added.
Protesters handed a petition to Civil Aeronautics Administration Flight Standards Division Director Clark Lin (林俊良), who accepted the letter for the ministry.
China Airlines Employees’ Union president Liu Hui-tsung (劉惠宗) also attended the rally, although he was rooting for the striking pilots.
Workers should support each other, Liu said, adding that going on strike was the last resort for workers to defend themselves.
Protesters accused Liu of being shameless and using the union’s membership fees for his campaign for the Taoyuan mayoral election last year.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS