Covered in bright yellow cloaks with the word “anger” painted across their chests, more than 100 former Hualon Corp employees demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Labor building yesterday, demanding that the ministry live up to its promise to fight for their unpaid pensions.
The workers retired about a decade ago and are owed an average of NT$1 million (US$33,000) each from the bankrupt textiles manufacturer, they said.
“Compensate 100 percent and stop playing dumb,” the demonstrators chanted, demanding a revision to Article 28 of the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) to stipulate debt repayment to workers as a priority after a company declares bankruptcy.
Photo: Huang Pang-ping, Taipei Times
Currently, the act only compensates for unpaid wages, not pensions and severance packages. The ministry announced a proposed amendment to the act on Thursday last week, offering to cover unpaid severance packages and pensions up to the equivalent of six months of a worker’s salary.
Refusing to accept what they called a “discount version” of their pensions, the workers demanded full compensation.
“Under the old system for workers’ retirement pensions, we are actually eligible for pensions that amount to 45 months of base salary. Six months is only a meager fraction of what we deserve,” Hualon Self-Help Organization president Lee Tsui-ming (李翠明) said, referring to the national pension system prior to 2005, before new labor regulations established mandatory retirement pensions of 6 percent drawn from the workers’ monthly salaries.
Another former worker of the factory accused police of using violence against the protesters during their surprise demonstration in front of the Presidential Office Building on Thursday last week.
“I worked at Hualon for 26 years, accumulating multiple illnesses through years of stress, but now we can’t even express our views to the authorities,” said another former worker, surnamed Tsai (蔡).
In August, the final piece of real estate belonging to Hualon Group, a factory in Dayuan Township (大園), Taoyuan County, was sold through a court auction for NT$2.4 billion. However, the workers only received NT$2,900 each, as most of the money went to pay banks and other creditors.
Although the ministry has promised to provide the workers NT$2 million in litigation fees to sue the banks, labor activist Lu Chih-hung (盧其宏) criticized the government’s inaction.
“Why should workers be expected to fight on their own, in lawsuits against banks and huge corporations?” Lu said.
In response, Department of Labor Relations Deputy Director-General Huang Ho-ting (黃荷婷) said it would be difficult to meet the workers’ demands.
“I think we will face difficulties in providing 100 percent compensation,” she said. “After all, the largest debtor to the workers is their former employer, so we can only try to work harder in our labor inspections to help workers who still use the old pensions system.”
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