The Taiwan Labor Front (TLF) made its case yesterday for raising the minimum wage as a way of improving living standards for low-wage earners.
At a forum on ways to save the working poor from poverty, TLF secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said the minimum wage should be raised to NT$22,115 (US$768) from the current NT$17,880.
If the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) were to raise the minimum wage level by just 3 percent, as it did last year, it would be an insult to workers, Son said.
The council is scheduled to review the minimum wage policy later this month.
Lee Chien-hung (李健鴻), a professor of Labor Relations at the Chinese Culture University, told the forum that Ministry of the Interior statistics show there were about 260,000 full-time minimum wage workers whose earnings fell below the poverty line in the first quarter of the year. If the 590,000 workers who are subsidized by the Public Assistance Act are added, there would be about 850,000 working poor in the country, Lee said.
TLF members said the large size of the population of working poor was the result of the unsynchronized growth of salary levels compared with economic growth, as well as the growing population of temporary workers and a stagnant minimum wage.
The front announced the establishment of a Research Center of Working Poor to conduct policy research and field studies to help find the causes of the phenomenon.
The TLF urged the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidates to come up with concrete policies to help alleviate the plight of the working poor.
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