The Ministry of Labor’s minimum wage review committee yesterday declined to approve another increase in the national minimum wage this year, despite protests by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and labor right advocates.
Department of Labor Relations Deputy Director Hsieh Chien-chien (謝倩蒨) said the decision was based on a lack of inflation this year, as well as soft economic growth data, adding that a potential increase would be reviewed again in six months.
About 10 people demonstrated outside the ministry’s building earlier yesterday, calling low wages a “national shame.”
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
“There has been absolutely no benefit for labor in the governance of the pan-blue and pan-green camps over the past 16 years,” SDP convener Fan Yun (范雲) said. “There has been no increase in labor wages since 2000, even though national GDP has increased by 50 percent.”
Even though worker productivity more than doubled between 1994 and 2012, labor costs as a percentage of firm revenue fell from 53.5 percent to 47.6 percent over the same period, she said, citing research sponsored by the ministry, and calling for presidential candidates to stake a clear position on addressing the issue.
Activists urged that the minimum monthly wage be raised by 30 percent to NT$26,000.
It was most recently adjusted last year, when the review committee approved a 3.81 percent increase to NT$20,008 with the change taking effect last month.
Fan said that the minimum wage failed to meet a basic criteria of being sufficient to support workers and their families, citing the Minimum Wage Fixing Convention and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The figure of NT$26,000 figure is meant to represent the average minimum wage needed to keep a family out of poverty. It was calculated by multiplying the Ministry of the Interior’s national individual poverty threshold of roughly NT$10,000 by the national dependency ratio of 2.6.
Taoyuan Confederation of Trade Unions chairman Mao Chen-fei (毛振飛) said that factory jobs in traditional industries such as food products typically only pay workers the minimum wage, forcing employees to work long hours to make ends meet.
He added that the low minimum wage also indirectly pulled down the wages of workers earning average salaries by allowing corporations to make extensive use of cheaper labor.
Mao blamed stagnant wages over the past 20 years on the abandonment of the Minimum Wage Act (最低工資法), which had required that salaries be sufficient to support a worker and two dependents.
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