The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) yesterday pledged to evaluate a proposal from a KMT legislator whereby it would subsidize companies for any employees deemed to be surplus "in a sluggish economy."
KMT Legislator Hou Tsai-feng (
Hou said that more companies are planning to lay off employees as the New Year approaches, which could increase Taiwan's unemployment rate, already at 5.2 percent.
Employers often lay off staff before the holiday to avoid paying bonuses.
"The government should try to grant compensation to employers to help them keep employees for several months, which would help both employers and employees," Hou suggested.
The lawmaker made the suggestion in response to media reports of possible layoffs at Formosa Plastics Group and Inventec Corporation.
Reacting to Hou's suggestion, CLA Chairwoman Chen Chu (
Hou's suggestion is based on labor regulations in Japan and South Korea. The Japanese government has had such a policy since 1974.
Under Hou's plan, the CLA would pay employers NT$15,840 a month for six months -- the current minimum wage -- for every employee deemed to be surplus.
Kuo Fang-yu (郭芳煜), director-general of the council's Employment and Vocational Training Administration, told reporters that the CLA would consider the proposal in principle but that criteria for eligibility and the levels of any payments would have to be considered.
"Solutions for some technical problems should be solved before the CLA goes further with the idea," Kuo said.
"A definition of `laying off' should be established and the formula for counting the number of [surplus] employees and the amount of compensation should be figured out," Kuo said.
Kuo Kuo-wen (郭國文), secretary-general of the Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions, however, said that the plan is not workable.
"How can the CLA judge when it is necessary for employers to announce layoffs? Also, with Taiwan's average salary at NT$40,000, employers still need to pay more for keeping their employees, which I don't think any of them would want to do," Kuo said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching