The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) senior officials should use their own money to help fund party workers’ salaries as the KMT is reportedly experiencing economic hardship as a result of action taken against it as part of an investigation into ill-gotten party assets, a party worker said.
The Executive Yuan’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee has frozen many of the KMT’s financial assets as part of its investigation, including banning withdrawals from the KMT’s Bank SinPac accounts and the freezing of nine cashier’s checks.
According to a KMT staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity, the party issued a memo informing workers that their salaries for last month are to be delayed until further notice, adding that the party expressed hope it would be able to compensate them sometime this month.
Rumors from within the party suggest supervisors have been encouraged to expedite all voluntary terminations of employment, the worker said, adding that many workers have started looking for employment elsewhere.
“Rank-and-file workers are not well-paid to begin with, and receiving late paychecks will cause serious hardships,” the worker said.
“We never thought the KMT could be late in paying our wages, and there is a sense that the party might be deliberately withholding wages to pressure workers into quitting,” the worker added.
The party’s suspension of wages has jeopardized morale because workers believe the party’s headquarters has sufficient assets to meet its obligations, the worker said, adding that the KMT’s senior officials should use their own money to pay workers’ salaries in order to restore calm within the workforce.
Separately, a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the DPP experienced serious fiscal challenges when it lost the general election eight years ago, but the party “never stooped to becoming arrears with the salaries of its party workers.”
According to the DPP official, the party in 2008 was NT$240 million in debt, and owing to the newness of the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法) at the time, large cash donations to the party were confiscated.
The DPP’s crisis of public image at the time meant it was shunned by entrepreneurs and other donors, resulting in greatly diminished revenues, the DPP member said.
The party combatted the issue by mandating a 10 percent cut on the income of workers in supervisory positions, including DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) salary, the DPP member said, adding that the party also adopted other cost-saving measures, such as downsizing its personnel and reducing rented office space by terminating its contract for two out of the four office floors it rented at the Huashan Business Building in Taipei, which the party did not rent again until 2010, when fiscal pressures were relieved.
The DPP member said the party also expanded its revenue by organizing fundraisers that were aimed at grassroots supporters, adding that measures used at the time included making lifetime party memberships available for NT$10,000, selling trademarked merchandise such as lunchboxes and bicycles, and working with credit card companies and IBON, the online-based convenience store.
When asked for comment on the KMT’s decision to withhold salaries, another DPP party official said that the KMT had not committed itself to making the hard choices that are needed for it to pay its party workers.
“Have they thought about new ways to raise funds? Reduce office space? They should stop troubling their rank-and-file workers and think about economizing and raising revenue,” the official said.
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