Former toll collectors yesterday began a round-the-clock standing vigil outside the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) headquarters in Taipei, demanding that the party outline specific steps to fulfill its promise to address their contentious labor rights case.
About 20 former toll workers and labor rights campaigners gathered in front of DPP headquarters before beginning four-hour shifts that saw protesters hold large standing placards announcing they were “bitterly waiting” for a resolution, saying the shifts would continue until the DPP presents a concrete plan.
“We’re here because it’s already been almost 100 days [since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office], but our case is hung up without any plan for addressing it,” National Alliance for Workers of Closed Factories member Kuo Kuan-chun (郭冠均) said. “We still have to bitterly struggle to force Tsai to stop stalling. Because she’s extremely busy and can’t see our suffering in waiting and carrying on the struggle, we’ve decided to take the battle here to make her see the bitterness with which more than 100 former toll workers are still waiting for her to deliver on her promises.”
Photo: CNA
A tent erected beside standing protesters featured an exhibit on the history of their movement, which began in 2013 following controversy over the severance packages for the toll workers, who were laid off following the adoption of the electronic toll collection system for the nation’s freeways.
Former toll workers say that they were unfairly denied the “seniority” used in calculating severance and pension benefits, despite working on freeway toll booths for years because of unfair governmental classification, and that the government and the electronic toll collections system’s operator, Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co (FETC, 遠通電收), have failed to follow through on their promises to help them find alternative work.
Former Freeway Toll Collectors Self-Help Organization president Sun Hsiu-luan (孫秀鑾) said that more than 180 of the 947 laid off toll collectors remain unemployed, with about 100 of those employed receiving equal-pay work at FETC and the rest accepting a five months’ severance pay offer.
While FETC’s contract included promises to provide equal-pay work to laid-off workers, it failed to open sufficient internal positions, while refusing to cover the salary difference for positions toll collectors found for themselves outside the corporation, she said.
She added that the DPP had failed to follow through with its promises to arrange for laid-off toll collectors to work in DPP-controlled local governments, saying that only one former toll collector had been able to find such work after the party failed to provide a list of available positions.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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