Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) yesterday called for a gradual incremental increase in the minimum wage to avoid adversely affecting businesses.
The council on Thursday announced that the minimum wage would be raised by 5.03 percent, from NT$17,880 (US$620) per month to NT$18,780, or from NT$98 per hour to NT$103 per hour, pending approval by the Executive Yuan.
Labor groups, who had called for a 31.2 percent increase to NT$23,459 per month, voiced their discontent, while business groups said the increase would raise their costs by an estimated NT$34.8 billion.
The council said a gradual — instead of a drastic — increase in the minimum wage every year would minimize its impact on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
“The council already has a mechanism in place. The minimum wage adjustment committee will meet every third quarter of the year to review basic pay standards,” Wang said.
She added that 80 percent of minimum-wage workers are employed by SMEs, and that a drastic increase in the minimum wage could lead to business closures and layoffs or relocations of businesses overseas, which would be unfavorable to local workers.
An estimated 1.7 million local workers and 190,000 immigrant workers will see their monthly pay increase as a result of the adjustment, Wang said, adding that the additional cost for businesses would be only NT$21.5 billion.
Approached by reporters for comment yesterday, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) dismissed criticism by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) about the proposed wage increase.
Wu said that during the DPP’s tenure from 2000 and 2008, the government raised the minimum wage only once, by NT$700 in 2007.
Since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government took over in 2008, the minimum wage increased by 3.47 percent, or NT$600, at the beginning of this year.
This, plus the latest proposed increase, would mean a pay raise of NT$1,500 for workers, Wu said.
“There is no reason for the DPP to lash out at us,” Wu said.
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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