The Taipei Department of Labor yesterday proposed suggestions for implementing the newly amended Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) in a bid to better protect labor rights.
Taipei Department of Labor Commissioner Lai Hsiang-lin (賴香伶) made the suggestions at a news conference to celebrate the department’s 30th anniversary.
“I have to stress that the remarks I make today are not intended to confront the central government. We believe that our suggestions are good plans for implementation,” she said of the changes that are to take effect on March 1.
“We are proposing four suggestions today and hope they can be explicitly included in the act’s implementation,” Lai added.
The law that was amended on Wednesday last week should be more specific regarding the period of time after which compensatory leave granted for working overtime is converted back into overtime pay, for example by stipulating “within a year or half a year,” she said.
As the act stipulates that the monthly overtime cap is 54 hours and no more than 138 hours every three months — a monthly average of 46 hours — a worker who ends up overworking in a particular month might not be legally protected if the employer can argue that they were under the three-month limit for any three-month interval that includes the overworked month, Lai said, adding for example that a worker might be under the limit for January, February and March together, but might have overworked during one of the months.
For this reason, the “every three months” portion of the law should be better defined, she said.
Moreover, as the act requires that conclusions made during labor management meetings for businesses with more than 30 people be reported to the local authorities, Lai said the government should set a specific time period to make the report.
“When are they required to report the conclusions? One month, three months, or a year after the meeting ended?” she said, adding that unclear rules make it difficult for local agencies to examine current labor conditions.
Lastly, as the act allows employers to move employees’ fixed weekly day off within a period of 14 days or shorten the rest time between shifts to eight hours under special circumstances, Lai said the “special circumstances” should be specified by the central government to ensure a nationwide standard.
In addition, the department hopes that companies with more than 200 employees can set up labor management meetings before the amended act takes effect, Lai said.
It would also supervise and encourage the nearly 5,000 companies in Taipei that do not have meetings to hold them, she added.
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