The government is open to the possibility of relaxing restrictions on the recruitment of foreign workers as an incentive to encourage China-based Taiwanese businesses to return to the country, officials said yesterday.
Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) yesterday presided over a meeting focusing on labor-related issues where business and industry leaders and heads of pro-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) labor groups were invited to offer their views, the last of a series of five symposiums aimed at devising ways to revive the economy.
At a post-meeting press conference, business leaders stressed that the issues brought to official attention at the three-hour closed-door meeting included advice that the government must loosen its rules on hiring foreign workers and provide separate regulations on the working hours limits for manufacturing sector workers and those in the service industry.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Chinese National Federation of Industries chairman Rock Hsu (許勝雄) described government rules — under which employers are required to contribute fees for each foreign worker they hire to a government fund which is used for vocational training projects for unemployed locals — as a “punishment” for businesses.
At a time when other countries are vying to attract Chinese investment and as soaring production and labor costs hit corporate investments, “Taiwan has to open up to more foreign workers,” Hsu said.
General Chamber of Commerce chairman Lawrence Chang (張平沼) called on the government to revise the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) to “allow for more flexibility in the regulations that govern limitations on working hours.”
In accordance with current legislation, a regular working day must not exceed eight hours and the total number of working hours should not exceed 84 hours within a two-week period.
An employer may shift working hours, provided that the total number of working hours does not exceed 48 hours per week.
According to a written proposal, the business groups suggested exemptions to existing regulations and called for the right to demand 72 extra working hours per month while adding that workers should be allowed two days off within a two week period.
They proposed that an employer be able to invoke exemption rules twice a year and that each time the exemption should be able to last for three consecutive months.
In response to the demands, Wu Ming-chi (吳明機), Vice Minister of the Council for Economic Planning and Development, said there is still room for Taiwan to recruit more workers from overseas.
The ratio of foreign blue-collar workers — about 400,000 — compared with the nation’s working population of about 11 million is about 3.78 percent, Wu said.
Council of Labor Affairs Deputy Minister Pan Shih-wei (潘世偉) said the agency was willing to review the regulations to create a win-win situation to boost economic development and to ensure the rights of local workers are protected.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods