The Hsinchu District Court on Tuesday ordered a ChipMOS manager, surnamed Chen (陳), to pay NT$50,000 (US$1,487) in damages to an assistant engineer for inflicting psychological trauma via verbal abuse.
The assistant engineer, surnamed Hou (侯), said he started working for ChipMOS in December 2006 in the equipment division, adding that his job description stated he was responsible for detecting anomalies in integrated circuits and maintaining testing equipment.
Hou said that Chen, his direct superior, forced him perform duties not in his job description, and often verbally and physically abused him if the job was not done to his standards, adding that Chen threatened him.
Hou said Chen told him to bypass actual testing when operating machinery conducting ultraviolet lithography because of a shortage of workers and just to fill out the records.
Hou said he refused, adding that it was a blatant disregard of company regulations.
Hou said his handling of the matter prompted Chen at a meeting on September 2014 to say: “His [Hou’s] head is full of shit.”
Hou said Chen had also asked him to manage foreign workers in the department.
Chen said that in a meeting on Dec. 30, 2014, Hou said: “You are going to pay for this,” after a piece of machinery failed because Chen said that the spring probe in the machine did not need to be cleaned.
Hou claimed that the constant verbal abuse caused him to develop heart palpitations, suffer from sleep disturbances, constant headaches and depression, adding that because of this he was unable to continue working at the company.
Hou said he was still undergoing treatment after leaving the company on Feb. 10 last year.
Hou sued Chen for NT$800,000 in compensation for nearly a year off work and another NT$1 million for psychological trauma.
Chen said his criticism of Hou was because he had great expectations of him.
Chen said that when the company first registered its stock and distributed warrants among its employees, he transferred 10,000 shares to Hou, adding that of the 60 company engineers, Hou was the only one to receive shares.
Chen said that Hou had even written him a thank-you letter and he could not understand how matters progressed to such levels.
Chen said his comments to Hou of “your mind is so dense it is useless,” and “his head really is full of shit,” were intended to mean that his mindset was inflexible, adding that he had simply used hyperbole in a vulgar fashion.
Chen added that he said in the meeting: “If you do things like this at another company, you would pay for it,” adding that it was meant to be encouraging, not derogatory.
However, the judge ruled Hou’s reputation was damaged by the incident and he was within his rights to ask for compensation.
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