National Chengchi University should be fined for violating the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) by failing to provide mandated labor insurance and pension benefits to student assistants, labor activists said yesterday as part of broader calls for the abolition of the “study” assistantships in favor of those carrying full benefits.
“Taking care of administrative tasks is not linked to one’s studies — I do not need to go to school to learn how to help someone buy lunchboxes or how to organize reading room books. If you were to do any of these things outside of school, it would be viewed as a worker being employed,” said Chen Yu (陳佑), a National Chengchi University student and executive secretary of the Taiwan Higher Education Union.
“If that is the content of work students are doing, whether or not it is ‘labor’ does not change because there is a new executive order,” he said.
Activists have criticized the Bureau of Labor Insurance for failing to levy fines against the school for denying labor insurance and pension benefits to student assistants who were ruled to have an “employment relationship” with the school by the Taipei City Government’s Department of Labor.
The protest was the latest sally in the continuing controversy over whether student assistants should be viewed as having an “employment relationship” with their schools, which would oblige schools to pay for labor insurance and pension benefits under the Labor Standards Act.
While the Ministry of Labor last year fined National Cheng Kung University last year for a series of similar cases, no new fines have been issued since the Ministry of Education had ruled that schools could distinguish between “study” and “employment” assistantship positions, said Lin Yi-chih (林奕志), a member of Chengchi’s Student Labor Rights Promotion Association.
He criticized the university for presenting students with a “false choice” by offering both “study” and “employment” teaching assistantships for the same work and classes, while docking the pay offered for “employment” assistants to pay for insurance and pension benefits.
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