Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wu Yi-chen (吳怡臻) and labor activists yesterday lashed out at Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) over remarks in which she said she was not a goddess and cannot resolve all the problems of the workers at Hualon Corp, who are seeking back salaries and retirement packages.
“Of course Wang is not a goddess, but she’s the CLA minister, and she must remember it’s her responsibility to stand up for workers and help solve their problems,” Wu told a press conference at the legislature in Taipei.
Wu was referring to a remark Wang made on Wednesday when talking to reporters about an ongoing strike by Hualon employees that started in June.
Workers at the company’s main factory in Toufen Township (頭份), Miaoli County, launched the strike over salary cuts that have been imposed in recent years, which their employer attributes to financial pressures.
The situation took a turn for the worse in June last year when several employees were asked to give up their pensions and redundancy payouts, while others were not paid their salaries. The company owes a total of NT$260 million (US$8.6 million) to its employees.
Facing protests, the company responded by asking them to accept compromise deals, while the government did nothing, workers said.
“I think an employer owing employees more than NT$260 million already constitutes a sizable labor dispute and it’s time for the government to do something,” Taiwan Labour Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said. “It doesn’t matter whether the minister is a goddess, we only care that she tries her best to support the workers.”
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is the chairman of the governing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) is a KMT member and the new owner of Hualon Corp, Miaoli County Council Vice Speaker Chen Chao-ming (陳朝明), is also a KMT member, Son said, adding that it should not be too difficult for Ma to help negotiate a deal that would protect the workers’ rights if the president truly cares about the situation.
“I think it’s time for Ma to come out and help,” Son said.
Hung Ching-shu (洪敬舒) of the Alliance for Fair Tax Reform said he was not surprised that the government is staying out of the dispute.
“The government only cares about big corporations. Whenever business leaders complain about something, they always find ways to help, even when it means amending the law, but when workers are in trouble the government just says that it can’t help,” Hung said.
Wu and the labor activists urged the public to write to the president to pressure him to act.
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