Ahead of the legislature’s scheduled review today and tomorrow of a bill on whether teachers can form unions, the National Teachers Association (NTA) yesterday publicized a letter from Education International (EI) calling on the government to respect teachers’ right to organize labor unions.
The English letter was written by Fred van Leeuwen, secretary-general of EI — a global federation of teachers representing more than 30 million members in 171 countries — and addressed to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Copies of the letter were sent to Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城), Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and UNESCO.
“EI is concerned that the draft union law currently tabled at the Parliament will actually continue to exclude teachers from the fundamental right to form and join trade unions,” the letter said.
“This means that the Government is actually restricting the rights of those it directly employs,” it said.
EI was referring to a proposed amendment to the Labor Union Act (工會法) that would bar teachers from forming a labor union at the school level.
If the bill passed the legislature, teachers would for the first time in the nation’s history be allowed to establish labor unions — except at the school level.
The NTA has criticized the bill and called the proposal “discriminatory” and “hostile” to labor unions.
The legislature also passed a proposed amendment to the Settlement of Labor-Management Dispute Act (勞資爭議處理法) on Friday prohibiting teachers from going on strike.
“We invite the Parliament to consider providing all teachers of Taiwan, R.O.C. the right to form and join trade unions, as prescribed by international labour standards,” the letter said.
EI said it would continue to monitor Taiwanese teachers’ right to form labor organizations.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS