Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (
While industrial action by railway workers failed to disrupt trains yesterday, the union threatened to try again next year by striking over the holiday period.
At an annual meeting yesterday, union members voted in favor of a seven-day strike that would include the four days of the Lunar New Year holidays that begin on Jan. 22.
"Rounds of negotiations over the past few months have never struck us as being a `zero-sum' scenario because what we'd like to see is a three-win situation for the union, the passengers and the government," Lin said.
Since the Executive Yuan stepped in to start cross-ministerial negotiations two months ago, Lin said, the government's stance on the matter has been clear.
"That is the interests of the passengers come before everything else and have to be safeguarded," Lin said.
In addition to safeguarding the interests of the passengers, the Cabinet has reiterated its resolve to protect the interests and benefits of the railway employees during the enterprise's corporatization and eventual privatization.
"It's an established government policy to privatize state-run enterprises," Lin said. "The longer the process, the more difficult it will be to upgrade their competitive edge."
In an era of globalization, no one can keep himself or herself from the global trend, Lin said.
"We'll continue down the road of reforms, including the privatization of the railway administration," he said.
The railway union had made five requests in exchange for giving up their Lunar New Year strike plans. One of the requests was to halt the impending corporatization of the railway administration.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun pledged in August to appropriate NT$100 billion to help revive the Taiwan Railway Administration, which will come under increasing competition from the high-speed rail link in 2005.
The money would come from the Cabinet's proposed NT$500 billion budget for the expansion of public construction projects over the next five years.
Council of Labor Affairs Chairwoman Chen Chu (陳菊) said she was puzzled by the union's move yesterday because the Taiwan Railway Administration and the Taiwan Railway Labor Union had together reached a consensus over the union's five demands on Aug. 29.
"It's against the law for a labor union to stage a strike while a consensus is being reached between the employer and the workers," Chen said.
According to Chen, the council had arbitrated between the Taiwan Railway Administration and the union more than 30 times since February before finally reaching a consensus on Aug. 29.
"Both sides managed to see eye to eye on such issues as the administration's corporatization, debt settlement and employees' rights and interests," Chen said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods