The Youth Labor Union 95 announced on Youth Day yesterday that the government's planned labor policy revisions still did not provide young workers enough protection against exploitation.
Since the beginning of this year, the labor union has received more than 30 complaints from workers across industries and job functions regarding disputes over workers' being forced to pay penalties to terminate work contracts, the group's executive member Tzeng Hsiang (曾翔) said.
The government recently proposed amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) that would put a cap on the minimum number of years worked at a company and the penalty paid in the event that a worker terminates a work contract prematurely.
However, the union said that though it recognized the proposed amendments were meant to help protect workers, even if they were passed, there would still exist many gray areas that allow companies to take advantage of vulnerable workers.
“Many businesses exploit workers who are eager to start work by requiring them to sign contracts that are extremely unfavorable to them because the contracts require workers to pay high penalties if they do not agree to things such as putting in overtime,” Tzeng said.
Lin Chia-ho (林佳和), an assistant professor of law at National Chengchi University, said labor regulations in Japan and South Korea prohibited employers from issuing penalties to workers who don't fulfill their contracts to protect workers from exploitation.
The union urged the government to use Japan and South Korea's experiences as a reference and to prohibit employers from penalizing workers for terminating their work contracts prematurely.
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