Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Chia-chen (盧嘉辰) yesterday called for changes to the Employee Welfare Fund Act (職工福利金條例). to slash benefits for employees of state-run enterprises.
Lu said he was seeking the support of other lawmakers to file such an amendment in the legislature.
The plan to amend the law follows a public outcry against the massive benefits enjoyed by employees of state-owned companies, in particular oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan, and electricity supplier Taiwan Power Co (Taipower).
Public anger has mounted following CPC’s raising of domestic fuel prices by between 7 and 11 percent on Monday to curb widening losses.
Although the firm is operating in the red, its employees still enjoy massive welfare benefits.
The public is even more furious, as the government is considering raising electricity tariffs to help Taipower, which said it has accumulated losses because of high energy costs.
In addition to the welfare benefits, employees of state-owned companies receive year-end bonuses of up to 4.6 months of their annual salaries.
Lu said the proposed amendment to the Employee Welfare Fund Act would focus on the amount of welfare benefits a state-owned company is allowed to assign to its employees.
It would require state-owned companies to assign 2 percent of the total salaries of their employees as financial benefits, the legislator said.
Current regulations allow state-run firms to assign a fraction of their monthly revenue as welfare funds for their employees.
Once the revision is approved by the legislature, the average benefits for CPC employees for this year would fall to NT$7,800, compared with an estimated NT$48,818 at present, Lu said.
In the case of Taipower, average benefits would drop to NT$5,583, from NT$29,926, he said.
Lu said it was no longer acceptable for loss-making state-owned companies such as CPC and Taipower to disburse massive funds as perks for their employees, as this would only further squeeze their bottom lines.
Moreover, as many state-owned companies are either monopolies or oligopolies, they generate massive revenues, making the current welfare benefit system inappropriate, he said.
He added that the welfare benefit appropriation measures had not been revisited for almost 70 years, and it was time to review the rules.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS