Labor rights activists and academics yesterday said they were skeptical that working conditions would improve despite the job market gradually showing signs of recovery.
The latest data from the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) showed that the number of workers told to take unpaid leave by their employers had dropped to 66,709 as of Aug. 15, from 74,468 at the end of last month.
In early March, the number of employees on unpaid leave peaked at 238,975, about four times as much as the latest figure.
Since March, the figure has decreased month by month, with 126,175 on unpaid leave at the end of June. Aside from unpaid leave, another indicator has also shown improvement in the job market — the number of people on unemployment benefits this month dropped for a second consecutive month to about 90,000 people.
However, Son Yu-lian (孫友聯), secretary-general of the Taiwan Labor Front, said the numbers did not tell the real story.
He said the more than 2 million workers insured under their trade unions and those working in small businesses with four or less employees were not entitled to unemployment benefits and therefore, did not appear in the count.
“The number of people receiving unemployment benefits does not tell us whether the job market is still suffering from the problem of joblessness,” he said.
Chu Wei-li (朱維立), president of the National Federation of Independent Trade Unions, said the most pressing problem with high jobless numbers was the rising number of atypical employees, which include part-time workers, temporary employees, interns and contract employees.
“Not only are atypical employees underpaid, but they face problems such as instability and poor working conditions,” he said.
Kenneth Lin (林向愷), a professor of economics at National Taiwan University, urged government officials to look at more than just jobless numbers.
Many people may in fact be involuntarily unemployed, but because they have given up on the job search, they are not counted as part of the unemployment equation. This does not mean, however, that jobless problems have disappeared, he said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift