The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) is close to completing proposed amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) that would include tighter restrictions and regulations for the temporary and contract labor market.
Council officials yesterday said they were coordinating efforts across government agencies to complete a proposal to amend the act, a move that would tighten restrictions on hiring contractors.
It said the proposal was expected to reach the Executive Yuan for approval next month.
Proposed changes include capping the percentage of a company’s contract workforce at 3 percent. However, a company would still be able to hire contract workers to make up 20 percent of its total workforce provided it received union approval and a majority of employees were union members.
PROHIBITIONS
The proposal would also prohibit hiring contract workers in certain industries, such as the medical, security, airline, marine, public transportation and coal mining industries.
The proposal came after the Control Yuan censored the council for what it said was a failure to adequately regulate the temporary and contract labor market and crack down on hiring agencies that violate labor rules.
BENEFITS
Council officials said the proposal would offer better benefits to temporary workers who have worked at the same company for at least a year. Employees in that category could apply to become regular workers and the company would be required to respond within three days, or the temporary worker would automatically receive regular employee status.
The council is also mulling whether to hold employers, rather than hiring agencies, responsible in the event of workplace-related incidents such as sexual harassment or discrimination.
Contract employees, or temps, are usually hired through employment agencies. In recent years, they have become a popular low-cost means for businesses to boost their workforce, as employers are usually not obliged to provide the same job benefits for contract workers as they do for regular employees. Many job seekers are willing to accept temporary work in the hope of later securing a regular position.
CLA statistics show that 516,000 people in Taiwan are employed as contract workers. The large number involved also highlights the importance of regulating this segment of the labor market to ensure temporary workers do not lose their jobs as a result of government intervention.
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
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
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