Chunghwa Post’s board of directors is expected to approve a proposed 3 percent salary increase at the end of this month, though entry-level employees are requesting a raise of between 5 percent and 10 percent.
The proposal to increase employees’ salaries at the state-run firm followed Premier William Lai’s (賴清德) announcement last month that the salaries of government workers are to be increased by 3 percent next year, which applies to workers at state-run companies as well.
Prior to the postal company’s announcement, both Taoyuan International Airport Corp and Taiwan International Ports Corp — two of the state-run companies under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) — announced that they would raise their employees’ salaries by 3 percent.
Chunghwa Telecom, of which the MOTC owns a 35.29 percent stake, has planned to raise workers’ salaries by 3.5 percent.
The postal company’s board of directors is scheduled to convene on Oct. 27 to decide if they agree to the comprehensive pay raise.
The human resources department is preparing the details of the proposal, which also needs to be reviewed by the accounting department before it can be submitted to the board, Chunghwa Post spokeswoman Lan Shu-jen (藍淑貞) said.
The percentage of the salary increase has yet to be finalized, Lan said.
Chunghwa Post president Chen Shian-juh (陳憲) said that while a comprehensive pay raise of at least a 3 percent is expected, whether the board would agree to giving entry-level employees a raise of 5 percent or more is unknown.
Entry-level employees at the postal company have lower salaries than those at other state-run companies, Chen said, adding that the salaries of entry-level employees still have room to improve even though they have been raised twice.
The company has about 25,000 employees, with 6,000 to 7,000 of them being entry-level, including mail delivery personnel and customer service clerks at the service windows in post offices, Chen said.
Since it became a state-run company in 2003, its entry-level employees have had lower starting salaries and fewer benefits than those at other state-run companies, the Chunghwa Post Workers’ Union said.
Consequently, many employees have left postal jobs after passing tests for other state-run companies with higher starting salaries, the union said.
Union of Transportation and Communications director Cheng Kuang-ming (鄭光明) said that he is to meet with Minister Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) next week about the possibility of giving the company’s entry-level employees a pay raise of between 5 percent and 10 percent.
“The salary for entry-level employees at Chunghwa Post is way too low. He [Hochen] had said that pay raises for state-run company employees could be greater than those for government workers, depending on whether the businesses are profitable,” Cheng said.
The postal company’s financial statement indicates that it generated a profit of NT$9.8 billion (US$322.9 million) last year, while it accumulated $7.649 billion in pre-tax profit between January and August this year.
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