A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilor yesterday accused the city’s Department of Labor Affairs of siding with employers and ignoring workers’ rights after a former bank employee was fired after a two-year maternity leave.
The 38-year-old employee, surnamed Wu, worked at the Shanghai Commercial & Savings Bank for more than 10 years before taking a two-year maternity leave in 2007. The bank refused her request when she applied to return from maternity leave in March.
She said she contacted the Department of Labor Affairs about the dispute, but the department left her to deal with the issue and ignored her case even after she was fired by the bank last month.
“I thought maternity leave was a basic labor right, and I thought the government would protect our rights. Apparently the government was not on my side,” Wu said.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Lee Wen-ying (李文英) criticized the department for what she described as its passiveness in handling the case and urged the department to step up protection of labor rights.
“The department failed to examine the bank’s working environment after receiving complaints from Ms Wu, and wanted her to negotiate with the company on her own. This is unacceptable,” she said.
Wu said the department told her the bank had violated Article 17 of the Gender Equality in Employment Act (兩性工作平等法) by refusing to let her return from maternity leave, but did not offer any help during negotiations. The department also refused to help her file a lawsuit against the bank after she was fired, Wu said.
Wu Hai-yen (吳海燕), a division chief at the department, denied siding with the bank over the case and said the department sent the employee’s complaints to the gender discrimination prevention committee for further investigation. She also said that the department demanded a detailed explanation from the company, and that the case was still under investigation.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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