Labor activists yesterday said they would hold a protest at the Council of Labor Affairs to express support for a hike in the minimum wage as the council holds talks on the matter today.
Activists said they were aiming for an increase to at least NT$22,115 per month from the current NT$17,280.
The biggest difference between this year’s talks and previous years is that the council has decreased the proportion of government representation on the committee. A third of the 21 committee members will represent labor, while a third will represent business and the rest will be government officials and academics.
However, as the list of committee members was released only a week ago, labor groups said they were in a hurry to coordinate efforts and come up with a negotiation strategy.
Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions secretary-general Hsieh Chuang-chih (謝創智) said the issue of whether to adjust the minimum wage had become a humanitarian issue, as the lower-paid workers are barely getting by while those at the top reap the benefits of economic growth.
The Directorate-General of Budgeting, Accounting and Statistics said on Aug. 19 that the annual average disposable income of the top 20 percent of income-earning households was 6.34 times that of the bottom 20 percent last year, the largest rich-poor gap since 2001.
About 1.2 million workers, including 170,000 foreign workers, now receive the minimum wage of NT$17,280 per month.
“Labor groups are confident that the minimum wage will be increased because the economy has gradually revived and many companies have expanded their hiring plans,” Hsieh said.
The secretary-general said many countries recently increased minimum wages, including South Korea, the US, Japan and China.
However, many still worry that the minimum wage will only be increased by 4 percent or 5 percent to account for the increase in the consumer price index.
Minor adjustments to the minimum wage, which was last adjusted in 2007, would not provide much benefit to workers, Hsieh said.
Labor groups arrived at the proposed figure of NT$22,115 by calculating factors including the amount that the average person in Taiwan spends per month and the average number of dependents for each worker.
“[A monthly wage of] NT$22,115 is the minimum wage level for workers to lead a life with dignity,” said Hsieh, adding that while business groups may have only the bottom line in mind, they should recognize the importance of social responsibility.
Also See: ECFA to widen income disparity: forum
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
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
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