A draft bill designed to prevent sudden mass layoffs and oblige employers to negotiate with laid-off staff, passed its first reading in the legislature's Sanitation, Envi-ronment and Social Welfare Com-mittee yesterday.
The Council of Labor Affairs and DPP Legislator Lai Chin-lin (賴勁麟) both sponsored draft legislation to address problems created by companies suddenly shutting down and leaving their employees without any compensation.
The committee combined the two proposals into a "mass layoff status" bill.
The bill would require companies wishing to layoff substantial numbers of employees to submit a plan both to the CLA and the labor affairs departments of local governments 50 days in advance or faces fines ranging from NT$100,000 to NT$500,000.
The dismissal plan would have to detail the dates and reasons for the layoffs, the company departments involved and the number of employees affected.
The legislation would require the labor department of the relevant local government to mediate between the company and its employees. It stipulates that companies who refuse to negotiate would face fines ranging from NT$ 30,000 to NT$150,000.
From January to October this year, about 250,000 people lost their jobs because of a company's closure or restructuring -- accounting for almost half of the 520,000 people now listed as unemployed. More than 2,000 people are currently involved in disputes over layoffs.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do