Premier William Lai (賴清德) urged employers to raise the starting salaries for their employees at a meeting with business leaders yesterday.
During his first breakfast meeting with the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce, Lai asked business leaders, including association director Lin Por-fong (林伯豐), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) and Fubon Financial chairman Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠), to invest in the nation’s development and follow in the footsteps of the government’s planned wage hike for public-sector employees to stimulate the market.
The unemployment rate has fallen to 3.75 percent, and 175,000 more jobs need to be created to reduce it to 2 percent as per the Singaporean standard, Lai said.
Better salaries would allow the nation to keep local talents from Chinese, Japanese and South Korean competitors, and the economy could improve if the brain drain could be slowed, Lai said.
The nation’s GDP growth is expected to reach 2.58 percent this year and surpass 2 percent next year, he said.
“Making progress in national development requires cooperation between public and private sectors, and between employers and employees,” Lai said.
Economic development is the Cabinet’s top priority, and the administration has introduced a series of policies, including the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, the New Southbound Policy and the “five plus two” industrial innovation program, Lai said.
Lai said he has put forward several economic policies since he took office in September, including a 3 percent wage hike for public employees; a tax reform package introducing tax reduction measures for salaried employees; proposals to alleviate five types of industrial shortages; as well as a set of deregulation measures to increase work flexibility.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet would next month introduce measures to create a friendly childrearing environment to tackle the nation’s critically low fertility rate and aging population, he said.
Business representatives said that work flexibility is necessary for business development and promised to ensure labor rights protection, Lai said after the meeting.
Business leaders did not make any further demands on the Cabinet’s proposed amendment to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), which would ease overtime rules, Lai said.
The association made 39 suggestions in the categories of solutions to industrial shortages, tax reform, innovation, the finance industry’s international expansion, the New Southbound Policy and cross-strait issues, as well as Taiwan’s regional development.
Lin asked the government to ensure a stable power supply and consider nuclear power as an option while avoiding imposing strict air pollution regulations.
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