A dozen members of the Hsing-fu Golf Club Union and their supporters yesterday protested in front of the Presidential Office Building, to demand that the Ministry of Labor end “the deliberate misclassification” of caddies as independent contractors instead of golf club employees.
The New Taipei City Labor Affairs Department and the Ministry of Labor have said that caddies should be considered employees, but most golf clubs in Taiwan, including Hsing-fu, continue to treat them as independent contractors to save money, Taoyuan City Confederation of Trade Unions secretary-general Wang Hao (王浩) said.
Independent contractors are not protected by the Labor Standard Act (勞動基準法) and do not receive labor and health insurance, a pension or paid leave, he added.
“Golf clubs refuse to provide these benefits to caddies and say this is just the way it has always been. We hope that the Presidential Office can instruct the Ministry of Labor to make it clear that all caddies should be classified as employees,” he said.
Union president Yeh Meng-lien (葉孟連) said the lack of labor and health insurance puts caddies at great risk, because all kinds of accidents can occur on a golf course.
“Earlier this year, a caddy working at a nearby golf club fell off a golf cart and lost consciousness. This made us realize how little protection we have at work,” she said.
Yeh said that like most caddies, she usually works more than 10 hours a day and rarely takes time off, because she does not get paid leave time.
“I took two days off during the Lunar New Year holiday and the other days I just lived on the golf course. I have absolutely no family life,” Yeh said.
The protesters said that caddies are also required to “help out” with other work on golf courses that is not part of their job.
The union held a strike on Tuesday last week, demanding that the Hsing-fu Golf Club in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口) recognize its caddies as formal employees, provide labor and health insurance and rehire 14 caddies who were fired after joining the union in November last year, she said.
“We will not stop protesting until the company is willing to negotiate with us,” she said.
As most caddies in Taiwan are women — including all of Hsing-fu’s — union members believe that they are fighting not only a labor issue, but also a gender problem.
Club jobs typically performed by men, such as grounds and equipment maintenance, are considered employee positions, but caddies are treated as contractors, union members said.
“I hope that our bosses learn that they should not underestimate women,” Yeh said. “We have a woman president and a woman minister of labor. If they can make it, we can make it too.”
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