The Ministry of Labor has allowed employers to force part-time employees to work for less than the minimum wage by failing to apply new working hour rules, Social Democratic Party (SDP) activists said yesterday.
“Even though we have switched to a 40-hour work week and the minimum hourly wage is supposed to be the minimum monthly wage divided by work hours, the ministry has not adjusted the hourly wage,” SDP Youth Committee convener Lu Yi-ting (呂伊庭) said.
When the reduction in working hours is taken into account, the minimum hourly wage should be NT$126, rather than the current NT$120, Lu added.
Amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) last year cut the number of regular work hours from 84 hours every two weeks to 40 hours per week.
If all of the nation’s 400,000 part-time employees had worked the maximum 35 hours per week, they would have lost the equivalent of NT$134.4 million (US$4.1 million) in wages since the new rules took effect in January, she said.
“It does not take much thought to realize the current NT$120 hourly wage is off,” SDP Policy Committee convener Fan Yun (范雲) said, adding that part-time employees working a full 40-hour week would earn NT$19,200 per month, less than the NT$20,008 minimum wage.
“This is clearly different pay for the same work and helps encourage the current ‘flood’ of part-time workers being pushed to work long hours in place of regular employees,” she said, calling on Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to follow through with her promise to pass legislation that protects part-time workers.
Taiwan Alliance for the Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare member Wang Ching-wei (王今暐) said that many young part-time workers earn less than the minimum hourly wage because of employers’ arbitrary docking of pay.
Lu said that poor enforcement of the Labor Standards Act and inadequate labor inspections were a problem, particularly outside the major cities in northern Taiwan.
“Many areas in the south and center [of the nation] do not even have a department to conduct labor inspections, with labor relations sections within their departments of civil affairs only responsible for handling national pensions,” she said, adding that a lack of inspections allows some employers to get away with paying less than the minimum wage.
Director of the ministry’s Department of Labor Standards and Equal Employment, Hsieh Chien-chien (謝倩蒨), said activists’ calculations failed to take into account extra work days.
“A month is longer than four weeks,” she said, saying that employees on average work 174 hours per month under the new 40-hour work week rules.
Assuming that part-time employees work standard 40-hour work weeks, they would earn an average of NT$20,880 per month, she said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai