Labor and women’s rights activists yesterday panned the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) for its decision to allow an employer to declare maternity leave for female employees as unpaid leave.
The controversy came as local media reports exposed a reply that the CLA had made to a woman who recently filed a complaint about her employer for declaring her two-month maternity leave as unpaid leave and paid her the legal minimum monthly salary of a little over NT$17,000 (US$488).
The CLA said in the reply that the employer did not violate the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), which requires employers to grant female employees eight weeks of leave after giving birth and pay them their full salary if they have worked for the company for more than six months or half if they have worked there for less than six months.
Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said he disagreed with the CLA’s interpretation of law.
“The CLA’s interpretation is a catastrophe for all female workers,” Son said in a telephone interview yesterday.
“As the government institution defending laborers’ rights, the CLA should distinguish parental leave from unpaid leave,” he said. “The CLA’s statement set a very bad precedent that disables the protection granted to female workers in the Labor Standards Act and the Act for Gender Equality in Employment [性別工作平等法].”
National Union of Taiwan Women’s Associations secretary-general Ho Pi-chen (何碧珍) said that unpaid leave and maternity leave should be separated, “because allowing unpaid leave is a temporary measure that the CLA came up with to help employers amid the global economic crisis.”
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英), who was a long-time women’s rights activist before becoming a lawmaker, said she would wait to look into details on the case to decide whether the CLA’s decision was appropriate.
“It’s not a problem [for an employer to pay the minimum wage to an employee on maternity leave] if they’ve reached an agreement on a long-term reduction of salaries,” she said. “But the employer should pay the full salary if unpaid leave is only a temporary measure announced unilaterally by the employer for the economic crisis.”
In response, Sun Bi-shia (孫碧霞), director of the CLA’s Department of Labor Standards, said the council “provided an explanation to the woman’s employer about the specific case.”
The council was not issuing an official letter to interpret related articles in the Labor Standards Act, she said.
“During maternity leave, the worker is not obligated to work, therefore, the employer should not be able to put the worker on unpaid leave,” CLA Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) said.
The council also reiterated that during periods of unpaid leave, the standard minimum monthly wage of NT$17,280 still applied.
Additional reporting by Shelley Huang
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