The Ministry of Labor’s adjudication board yesterday rejected the Taiwan Railway Union’s appeal of the Taiwan Railways Administration’s (TRA) disciplinary actions against employees after a protest during the Lunar New Year, but affirmed union members’ right to “take legal holidays.”
“The union’s resolution by itself is not valid, because it cannot confirm exactly which members are unwilling to work over a holiday,” Department of Employment Relations Director Wang Hou-wei (王厚偉) said, referring to a resolution passed by union members on Jan. 1.
The adjudication board faulted the union for waiting until Jan. 23 to turn in individual member’s notifications that they were to “take a legal holiday,” just four days before the Lunar New Year.
It was “difficult to call the behavior an honest and credible way to exercise rights,” the ruling said, adding that the union had no basis to call the action a legal union activity.
The ruling removed the foundation for the union’s complaint that the TRA had sought to suppress union activities when it gave demerits to 331 union members who participated in the action.
The “legal holiday” protest was organized in retaliation for the TRA’s alleged refusal to negotiate with the young union over a switch to continual rotating shifts. Union members took advantage of labor rules that make work attendance voluntary on national holidays, which often coincide with peak periods for transportation demand.
The adjudication board reaffirmed that transportation workers’ attendance is voluntary on national holidays, but said that failure to object to already published schedules in a timely fashion could be viewed as tacit consent.
It ruled that union members who objected to the Lunar New Year’s published shift schedule within seven days of publication or asked for a day off at least seven days before the the holiday should not be considered “absent without leave,” while advising the TRA to deal with the others “leniently” and refrain from issuing demerits or docking salaries.
However, the advice was non-binding and it was unclear what actions the TRA would take, Wang said, adding that the union could file for an administrative lawsuit if it disagrees with the ruling.
Implementation of the demerits has been put on hold pending the adjudication board’s ruling.
Taiwan Railway Union secretary Hsiao Nung-yu (蕭農瑀) said her union was “extremely disappointed” by the ruling, adding that it was “extremely conservative” and lacked clear standards.
“If our members expressed their unwillingness to work over the holiday too late, how soon is early enough?” she asked.
Department of Labor Standards and Equal Employment Deputy Director Huang Wei-chen (黃維琛) said there is currently no legal definition of a “reasonable” time within which workers must object to a published shift schedule if they want to apply for leave.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods