The Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union and EVA Airways (長榮航空) yesterday signed an agreement to end a strike at midnight on Tuesday.
Union president Chao Kang (趙剛) and EVA chairman Steve Lin (林寶水) signed the agreement at the Taoyuan City Government, after Minister of Labor Hsu Ming-chun (許銘春) and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) mediated talks.
Airline officials and union representatives at 2pm resumed negotiations for the third time as the strike entered its 17th day after starting at 4pm on June 20.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
A preliminary understanding of the agreement was that it was roughly based on the terms and conditions proposed by EVA on June 28, which a majority of the union’s members had voted in favor of, except for a few changes in language and an increase to the number of people the union would appoint as directors or supervisors on the firm’s board from 11 to 13.
Other terms in the June 28 version of the agreement include a pledge by the company not to take action against strikers and to cooperate with the union to end the strike; the provision of a bonus of NT$300 to NT$500 per trip; and to allow flight attendants to rest overnight on flights BR198 and BR108, which fly to Tokyo, from October to March, and on flight BR716 to Beijing from April to August, excluding May.
EVA would also host monthly employer-employee meetings; a quarterly board of directors’ or general manager’s meeting; and semi-annual reviews of duty rosters and work arrangements on regular, predetermined dates, it says.
A personnel evaluation committee would include five elected instructors, who would take turns; one coevaluator with the right to speak and vote; and one serving flight attendant to accompany the person being evaluated, it states.
The union’s board appointees would be entitled to 25 annual paid leave days for their participation and would have the company’s cooperation in arranging their schedules, the agreement says.
Meanwhile, the union described as a breakthrough EVA dropping Articles 1, 2 and 5 from its list of demands in the so-called “peace agreement.”
Article 1 said that union members should not “bully, discriminate or criticize” company employees, and refrain from making comments or taking actions that are “illegal or otherwise inappropriate.”
Article 2 would have banned the union from spreading “untrue comments” or “speaking against” the company, executives or shareholders or risk a NT$500,000 fine, with each union member’s remarks counted separately toward calculating the fine.
Article 5 would have required the union to give a 30-day notice prior to beginning a strike during the agreement’s stipulated effective period, or “shoulder all costs, including criminal consequences.”
The union also agreed not to call a strike in the next three years as long as EVA takes no action against its members for having taken part in the latest strike and to return within the next three days passports, Mainland Travel Permits for Taiwan Residents and EVA employee identification cards to striking members.
EVA later issued a statement apologizing to the public for the inconvenience and social disturbance the strike had caused.
As the union’s commitment not to go on strike for the next three years eliminated the need for advance notice of a strike and workplace bullying is already illegal, the company does not see the agreement as a concession, EVA attorney Chen Yi-hsuan (沈以軒) said.
As of yesterday, the strike had resulted in the cancelation of 1,439 flights and affected 278,420 travelers, the Ministry of Transportation and Communication said.
EVA’s transportation capacity dipped to a low of about 40 percent at the beginning of the strike before recovering to 60 to 70 percent, it said.
Travel agents and EVA have reached a settlement to cover the former’s financial losses, while individual travelers delayed for more than six hours are to receive compensation for additional lodging, dining and transportation costs of no more than US$250, it added.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS