Editors still on war path

Dismissed editors from the Taichung and Kaohsiung offices of the China Times newspaper gathered Saturday in their respective offices to mark their last day as employees.

The sacked editors are fighting for reinstatement or at the very least, better compensation.

The newspaper dismissed over 100 editors from its southern bureaus at the end of May. The editors have filed petitions with the local and central governments and protested in front of the newspaper's Taipei office.

After more than a month of protesting, however, frustration is spreading within their ranks -- and a number of the dismissed editors have given up the fight.

At present, the former newspaper workers have received compensation stipulated by their local labor affairs departments. But even Taipei City's labor affairs chief admits that's just not enough.

Cheng Tsun-chi (鄭村棋), director of the Taipei City Bureau of Labor Affairs commented: "These workers have a right to ask for more than the minimum legal level of compensation."

Yu-Bing-yu (于秉瑤), a spokeswoman for the Kaohsiung office's dismissed editors, said that efforts to sow discord among them have persuaded her to fight to the end.

"There are about 40 dismissed editors who have vowed to keep fighting. We are more united now that some of our less-committed colleagues have decided to drop out of the protest," Yui said.

"Since our former employers expected us to stop protesting at the end of June, we decided to fight on until the newspaper gives us a reasonable response. So, even though a friend has located a new position for me, I want to postpone the new job and keep fighting," she said.

Liao Te-ming (廖德明), spokesman for the Taichung office's dismissed editors, believes that their stance to maintain the protest is putting added pressure on the China Times to offer a more reasonable response.

Wu Yung-yi (吳永毅), advisor to the China Times labor union, said confidently that this is just the beginning of the fight.

"We've already established a plan for a long-term battle. We just started to seek support for further protests from the Taichung and Kaohsiung local labor unions, which means we would have more support and resources in the future.

In an effort to discredit the China Times' reasons for dismissing them, the disgruntled editors have focused protests on attacking the newspaper's excuses.

Since the newspaper claimed that the NT dollar's devaluation increased the cost of paper pulp and forced the dismissals, they took their protest to central bank Deputy Governor Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟), whose remarks on foreign exchange policy partly inspired the NT dollar's fall against the greenback at the end of May.

The dismissed editors therefore demanded that the central bank consider protection for import trade companies when they make foreign exchange policies.

Because the newspaper additionally claimed that the rush dismissal was to avoid tension with its bank over loans, the dismissed editors went to the newspaper's main bank, the Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行) on Friday to petition the bank not to force China Times to repay the money.

Explaining the protest targets, Liao said that: "We just want to prove that the newspaper is just offering excuses to shirk its responsibility."