The National Alliance for Workers of Closed Factories yesterday vowed to continue fighting for the interests and dignity of workers by staging a series of protests this year that will begin with a rally at Taipei Railway Station today.
Today’s protest is scheduled to begin at 3pm and marks the one-year anniversary of a demonstration the group staged last year at the station that made headlines across the nation.
The organization was formed by former employees of several large factories who either retired or were laid off 16 years ago without receiving any severance or retirement pay after their workplaces were shut down.
To assist these workers, the government agreed to give them loans that had to be repaid only after they had found new jobs. However, the workers then started receiving payment due notices from the Council of Labor Affairs asking them to pay back the loans, including interest and late fees.
The notices sparked a series of protests, with labor rights advocates arguing that the government should not ask the former employees to repay the loans because the council was party to blame for failing to ensure that the employers had sufficient funds for their staff’s retirement payouts.
The council also neglected to seek compensation from the employers after they shut down their factories, the alliance said.
The loans that the laid-off workers received should be considered as part of a “national compensatory fund” to repair the damage done by the government’s administrative negligence, the rights advocates added.
The plight of the alliance members came into the national spotlight on Feb. 5 last year when nearly 100 workers paralyzed the Taiwan Railways Administration system by jumping off the platforms and laying on the tracks at Taipei Railway Station.
“It [the protest] let the public see the workers’ desperation and persecution at the hands of the government, but it did not serve as a wake-up call for the government. Tragic things continue to happen and people without means are still being treated unfairly, as can be seen in incidents ranging from the forced demolition of civilians’ houses in Dapu [(大埔), Miaoli County], to the truck driver who rammed his truck through the entrance of Presidential Office Building,” the alliance said on Facebook.
“As the new year begins, we have no other choice but to continue fighting. We will go back to Taipei Railway Station and pray that the protests will proceed smoothly and everyone will eventually live in peace,” it said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the