Adjunct lecturers should be included in the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) to prevent schools from forcing them out to avoid paying new labor insurance requirements, the Taiwan Higher Education Union said yesterday.
More than 20 union members threw pieces of chalk on to the Ministry of Education’s courtyard after tracing the outlines of members lying on the ground wearing labels saying they had been improperly fired.
“Adjunct instructors have been the ones sacrificed during the expansion of Taiwan’s higher education, because they have been used to stand in for full-time professors, but have not been given legal protection,” Taiwan Higher Education Union secretary-general Chen Cheng-liang (陳政亮) said, adding that the instructors do not receive any guarantees under the Teachers’ Act (教師法) or the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The Teachers’ Act empowers the ministry to promulgate relevant regulations, but the ministry last month reversed last year’s decision to apply the Labor Standards Act, instead revising existing hiring rules, union members said.
The biggest issue facing adjunct instructors is the lack of employment guarantees, as their yearly contracts can be terminated without cause or severance pay, unlike ordinary workers, union researcher Chen Po-chien (陳柏謙) said.
“Adjuncts are legal orphans because the ministry’s changes to hiring rules do not include any working or rehiring rights and do not include any penalties for violations by schools,” union office director Chen Shu-han (陳書涵) said, adding that many schools are firing adjuncts to avoid paying labor insurance.
New regulations require schools to allocate 6 percent of adjuncts’ salaries toward labor insurance if the instructors are not insured by employment elsewhere, she said.
“While the ministry fully subsidizes labor insurance payments, there is no guarantee that there will be subsidies in a year or two and many schools have begun to gradually lay off adjuncts who do not have full time work elsewhere,” Chen said, adding that such adjuncts make up about a third of the nation’s 30,000 adjunct instructors.
Wu Chih-wei (吳志偉), a section head with the ministry’s Department of Higher Education, said the ministry would hear each case of unfair job termination, but did not set a timetable.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS