The family of an engineer who died last year, allegedly from overwork, called on the Bureau of Labor Insurance yesterday to grant them justice, saying it should side with employees rather than employers.
Wu Shih-pin (吳世彬) started work as an engineer at a high-tech firm in Tainan in 2009. He was found dead in his house, aged 36, on Jan. 14 last year. He is survived by his wife and two young children.
Speaking at a press conference in the company of Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Shu-ying (黃淑英), Wu’s mother said her son worked until midnight every night at his new job.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“My son told me he was under a lot of stress,” his mother said. “He said he had to meet the demands of the company, no matter how late he had to stay.”
An autopsy and a report conducted by a local hospital ruled that sudden cardiac death claimed Wu’s life and that his death was related to overwork.
The family said they presented the two documents to the bureau, but the bureau determined that Wu’s death was not the result of overwork.
Employees who are covered by labor insurance are entitled to compensation if they die from overwork. Their beneficiaries have to submit applications to the bureau, which conducts an initial evaluation and decides whether it will grant compensation. If the beneficiaries protest against the bureau’s decision, it then forwards the case to a review committee for a second assessment.
In response to the family’s complaint, Tsai Su-ying (蔡素櫻), an official at the bureau, said the attendance punch-card system data collected from Wu’s company shows that Wu did not work excessive overtime. The review committee is composed of 17 professionals, including doctors, and at the two previous meetings they did not find that Wu died of overwork, she said.
However, Huang said that because many employees must bring their work home with them, working late to fulfill assigned tasks, punch cards do not offer conclusive evidence.
Huang presented data collected from Wu’s home computer showing that the engineer worked at home until as late as 2am for several consecutive days prior to his death.
The Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) stipulates maximum regular working hours of eight hours a day and 84 hours every two weeks. Most workers can take two days off each week, in line with workers in the public sector.
However, an amendment passed in 1996 exempts certain workers from the eight-hour work rule, as long as they reach an agreement with their employers on how long they should be on duty.
In the case of many high-tech firms, employees often do not have a fixed schedule but have to finish the work that is assigned to them for any particular day, no matter how long it might take them.
Tsai said the committee members would hold another meeting before the end of this month to make a final decision in Wu’s case.
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