As many as 1.1 million workers, or 13 percent of the workforce, put in more than 312 hours above the number of legal working hours last year, the latest statistics showed.
Working many hours of overtime is commonly known as bao gan (爆肝), or “liver busting.”
Taking the legal limit of 84 working hours per two weeks, statistics from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed that last year, 45.8 percent of workers — 3.89 million — worked more than 42 hours per week.
In a paper published in this month’s issue of the Taiwan Journal of Public Health, Taipei Medical University researcher Tsia Feng-chen (蔡奉真) said working many hours of overtime has a detrimental effect on workers’ health.
Tsai said the situation in Taiwan has not improved over the past 10 years and that “we are lagging behind many countries in terms of protecting employees from being forced to exceed the legal limit on working hours.”
In 2000, the government stipulated that the number of working hours could not exceed 84 hours over a two-week period.
Using a survey published 10 years ago by the International Labor Organization on working conditions in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and several European and North American nations, Tsai compared Taiwan’s regulations with the working hours in 49 other countries.
She found that most of these countries had set their weekly legal working hours at 35 to 40 hours, with 32 nations having a shorter working week than Taiwan.
Data published by the Council of Labor Affairs showed that Taiwanese employees worked a total of 2,144 hours on average in 2011, which was the second-highest amount, behind only Singapore, but 54 hours more than South Korea and 416 hours more than Japanese workers.
Tsai said that the council should inspect working conditions in Taiwanese companies.
In addition, Tsai urged the council to keep up with international trends in labor rights.
Council of Labor Affairs Minister Pan Shih-wei (潘世偉) said the international trend is heading toward a shorter work week, and Taiwan has much room for improvement regarding working hours.
“To improve the situation, we should strengthen the collective negotiation process between unions and management, as well as inspect labor conditions and other long-term plans to amend the labor laws,” he said, adding that the council is also planning to offer incentive programs for companies to decrease working hours, so that workers can find a balance between their work and their daily living.
Yangmingshan National Park authorities yesterday urged visitors to respect public spaces and obey the law after a couple was caught on a camera livestream having sex at the park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) earlier in the day. The Shilin Police Precinct in Taipei said it has identified a suspect and his vehicle registration number, and would summon him for questioning. The case would be handled in accordance with public indecency charges, it added. The couple entered the park at about 11pm on Thursday and began fooling around by 1am yesterday, the police said, adding that the two were unaware of the park’s all-day live
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
RSS