Four candidates running for director of the Taipei Labor Department yesterday pledged their support to the nation’s teachers to have the right to conduct strikes.
With a shared background in labor rights activism, the four candidates rank among 23 qualified participants in Taipei mayor-elect Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) unconventional plan to invite public participation in appointing the department’s future director, which has traditionally been an appointed position.
Although the nation’s teachers have had the right to unionize since 2010, current regulations prohibit teachers from conducting strikes, National Federation of Teachers’ Unions president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Teachers’ unions face challenges on their collective bargaining rights from the Ministry of Education, as well as skepticism from parent’s associations, Chang said.
“Teachers’ rights to unionize are constantly restricted by school administrators on the grounds of protecting students’ rights to education,” Chang said.
“Many public-sector employees face restrictions to their labor rights,” Chang said. “Firefighters and policeofficers are still fighting for their rights to unionize.”
The four candidates who expressed support for the teachers’ unions are Raging Citizens Act Now secretary-general Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶); Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions secretariat Shieh Tsuan-chih (謝創智); Soochow University professor Hu Po-yen (胡博硯); and former National Taiwan University Labor Union secretary-general Kenny Lin (林凱衡).
Hu said public agencies in the municipal government should all have the right to unionize and engage in collective bargaining under Ko’s administration, adding that the future director of labor should aid teachers in their negotiations with the Department of Education.
“I think we should promote education on teachers’ labor rights,” Shieh said.
“If there actually comes a day when teachers’ unions stage a strike, it would most likely be in reaction to significant problems within our government, and would act as an opportunity to pursue reform in the educational system,” Shieh said.
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