Money saved by eliminating “preferential savings accounts” for retired military personnel, civil servants and teachers should be returned to the national budget rather going to national pension funds, labor rights campaigners said yesterday, while calling for the government to pass a long-term plan to unify the nation’s divergent pension systems.
“The NT$70 billion [US$2.3 billion] we are spending on interest for preferential savings is already in excess of what pensioners should be receiving — it should be invested into programs which benefit younger people,” Taiwan Labor and Social Policy Research Association executive director Chang Feng-yi (張烽益) said.
The preferential interest is appropriated from the national budget, while funds for pensions themselves are drawn out of pension funds financed mainly by salary deductions.
Government pension reform plans would eliminate special accounts, while money which would have been appropriated for interest payments is to be put into pension funds, increasing the number of years before the pension fund is bankrupt.
Chang also called for pensions for non-military personnel to be gradually adjusted until the civil servants’ and teachers’ pensions can be merged with a pension system for other workers.
He rejected calls to increase workers’ pensions and introduce a new universal minimum pension.
“National Labor Insurance already has a ‘guaranteed pension’ — it is just that it is only NT$3,000 a month,” he said, adding that some cuts to workers’ pensions would be necessary.
Chang also called for increases to pension fund contributions.
Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-liam (孫友聯) said there was no room to reasonably reject cuts, which he blamed on faulty calculations when revisions to the system were passed in 2008.
Taiwan Labor Front director Bair Jeng-shiann (白正憲) called for mandated pension fund contributions to be automatically adjusted based on fund performance, while rejecting some labor groups’ calls to retain “guaranteed payments” to pensioners.
Additional reporting by Huang Pang-pingront
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS