Labor groups are set to hold a protest in front of the Judicial Yuan today to voice their dissatisfaction over what they characterize as unfair judicial proceedings relating to labor disputes.
The recent wave of corruption scandals involving high-ranking judicial officials and judges have prompted labor groups to call attention to what they are calling serious injustices in court rulings and proceedings involving labor disputes, said Chu Wei-li (朱維立), president of the National Federation of Independent Trade Unions.
Two High Court judges and one Supreme Court judge were recently suspended in the latest corruption scandal implicating top judiciary figures, fueling public distrust in the country’s legal system.
Last year, two employees at Era News reported the station’s practice of taking telephone calls from Typhoon Morakot victims and their families and then failing to pass on the information to rescue workers. The employees’ claims were later confirmed to be true, but they were still fired by the news station.
Despite the facts of the case, a labor dispute lawsuit returned a ruling in favor of Era News, citing a breach of trust on the part of the employees.
The court ruled that the TV station did not have to pay the employees’ salaries during the dispute period, nor did it have to provide severance pay.
Labor groups cited another case, in which union leader Lin Tzu-wen (林子文) revealed that the company he worked for was over-charging customers for gas and was subsequently fired. The case resulted in a similar ruling in favor of the company.
The labor groups say they suspect serious corruption in the country’s judicial system, where they claimed favorable rulings can be bought with money earned from exploiting workers.
“In a society ruled by money and power, having money equals having power. The judicial system is very unfair to disadvantaged workers,” Chu said.
The union president said that labor disputes are often downplayed and barely make it to the courts.
Even when a case does make it onto the docket, judges frequently do not have a good grasp of the workings of unions and the difficult circumstances that disadvantaged workers face, Chu said. Needless to say, workers have even less chance of a fair hearing if the judges are willing to take bribes in exchange for passing down favorable rulings, Chu said.
Dozens of labor groups are joining together to protest this institutional bias and plan to start their demonstration today with a skit performed in front of the Judicial Yuan, demonstrating how judicial corruption has worsened the exploitation and unfair treatment of workers.
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:
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