Proposed legal changes will deprive workers of the rights, labor leaders said yesterday.
The Cabinet has presented to the legislature a draft of the Labor Three Law (
PHOTO: CHU FEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
"Once the Cabinet's draft has cleared the Legislative Yuan, there will be more restrictions on workers. Teachers, civil servants and those in state-run enterprises will be barred from forming unions," said Lu Tien-lin (
People working in the areas of national defense, utilities and air-traffic control would be denied the right to strike under the proposed law. Workers in telecommunications, transportation, public health, refineries, hospitals and energy would have to go through a 30-day cooling-off period before going on strike.
Leaders representing workers in the airline industry, energy sector, national defense and education held a press conference yesterday to denounce the draft.
Teachers said planned changes to the Labor Union Law (
"Only recently when the National Teachers Union (全國教師工會) joined an international teachers' organization did we realize that Taiwan is the only country to obstruct teachers from forming labor unions," said Chang Chuo-chin (張焯青), secretary-general of the teachers union.
The union cited a UN statement that says "everyone has the right to form a union or join a union" to argue that teachers in Taiwan should have equal rights, and questioned the government's claim that the country is rooted in democratic values and human rights.
People First Party Legislator Lin Hui-kuan (
"In 2000, in his labor policy proposal, President Chen Shui-bian (
Labor organizations may have to seek international aid if the legislature passes the Cabinet's draft, Lin added.
Second reading of the bill, a strong indicator of whether it will be passed into law, is scheduled for today in the legislature.
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