If the government insists that its decision to set prerequisites for a minimum wage hike was legitimate, it should adopt the same requirement for government officials’ ‘salary schemes, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said yesterday.
The Executive Yuan on Wednesday put off a plan to raise the minimum monthly wage by NT$267 (US$9.10), with Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) saying that wages would be raised only if GDP grows by more than 3 percent for two quarters in a row or the unemployment rate drops below 4 percent for two consecutive months.
“This decision was made solely from the employers perspective, showing that the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] has always been a a party which sides with the corporates,” DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) told a press conference.
Photo: CNA
If the government truly cares about the public, it could have set the prerequisite of the salary adjustment scheme based on the Consumer Price Index, Huang said.
Huang dared Chen to adopt a scheme that reduces government officials’ salaries when GDP growth is lower than 3 percent and the unemployment rate is higher than 4 percent.
The government is basically making its responsibilities — to promote GDP growth and reduce unemployment rates — preconditions for workers’ salary schemes, DPP Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said.
Pan added that the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) does not give authority to the Executive Yuan to overrule recommendations by the Minimum Wage Review Committee, a mechanism set up to review the minimum wage on an annual basis.
“During the past 20 years, no recommendation of the committee had been rejected,” Pan said.
The DPP caucus said it would report the Executive Yuan to the Control Yuan, saying it had violated the law. The DPP added that it would propose next week the establishment of similar salary scheme thresholds for government officials.
Chen’s decision means “the chance of a minimum wage hike is close to impossible,” DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said, because Taiwan is now struggling to keep its GDP growth above 1 percent and unemployment rates during Ma’s term have never been below 4 percent, except for one month.
Former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is visiting India, said in a press release yesterday that the measure “has held Taiwanese people accountable for the government’s irresponsibility.”
If the Ma administration established such preconditions for workers’ salaries, Tsai said, it should set up a timetable to stimulate GDP growth and reduce jobless rates as well.
Separately yesterday, labor groups staged a protest outside the Executive Yuan building against the Cabinet’s decision not to raise the minimum monthly wage, calling for Sean Chen to resign.
Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said he was angry about the Cabinet’s announcement that the monthly minimum wage will not be adjusted higher until the economy improves.
“Announcing a delay in the minimum monthly pay is like a death sentence on minimum wages, with immediate execution,” Son said.
Noting that Taiwan’s unemployment rate has not dropped below 4 percent in the last four years, he said the labor groups cannot accept the Cabinet’s decision or trust the government anymore.
Additional reporting by CNA
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