Workers’ rights advocates on Thursday announced the founding of the National Communication and Media Industry Union, which is aimed at improving the working conditions of people employed in the mass communication industry.
Media Workers Union member Lu Yi-jung (呂苡榕) said that conditions are on the decline for media workers, with overtime without pay or not logging actual working hours common occurrences.
Many media workers have reported stress-related auditory or visual hallucinations which have a terrible impact on the physical or mental health of those concerned, she said.
An inspection on working conditions in the media industry carried out by the Taipei Department of Labor last year fined 34 media companies a total of more than NT$10 million (US$315,878) for violations of the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), Lu said.
However, 80 percent of the sanctioned media companies have still not complied with regulations or paid their staff for overtime, Lu said.
Despite the funds being available on paper, many employers insinuate that staff should not apply for overtime or compensation days, Lu said, adding that many media workers are still working more hours than the law allows and are afraid to ask for overtime.
Such experiences in the media industry are commonplace, and some employees have brought their companies to court over their working conditions, Next TV Union director-general Cheng Yi-ping (鄭一平) said, adding that such litigation is usually obstructed by employers due to the lack of strong union representation.
The obsession with breaking news of recent years has become yet another burden on reporters, Cheng said.
With the transformation of the news into a commercial market place, the onus on journalists is to provide “clickbait” rather than quality reporting, Cheng said, adding that in such an environment, most breaking news is not only worthless, but also overshadows the news that the public might need to know.
The idea of a union is not to foment a clash with employers, but simply to form an organization that stimulates a better and more equal platform to negotiate for media employees’ rights, Cheng said.
National Chengchi University’s college of communication director Liu Chang-de (劉昌德) said that from 2004 to 2013, media workers’ salaries dropped by an average of 13 percent, while the number of people employed by media companies has dropped by 20 percent.
Saying that “the work environment is the factor guaranteeing news quality,” he added that only with the formation of proper unions can employers be convinced to change working conditions.
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