Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Kao Chia-yu (高嘉瑜) yesterday criticized the Taipei City Government for being a bad role model after a survey showed that Taipei City Hospital has been fined several times for contravening the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Statistics obtained from the city government showed that among the 22 companies that have broken the law more than seven times between 2013 and April this year, four were in the security industry, she said.
Kao said the contraventions include not having employee attendance records, not paying overtime on weekdays, working hours extending to more than 12 hours and not allowing employees to take leave.
Other companies in the list included supermarkets, transportation services, banks, hotels, a gym and an airline.
Two were governmental organizations: National Taiwan University (NTU) and Taipei City Hospital.
NTU contravened the law eight times and was fined NT$500,000 (US$16,858) and Taipei City Hospital seven times and was fined NT$1.56 million, Kao said.
The hospital was fined four times for not paying overtime according to the law, which the Taipei Department of Labor considered a serious problem and imposed a heavy fine because the hospital’s branches have 4,447 employees, she said.
It is unacceptable that the hospital is run by the city, but it still broke the law, she added
The hospital has been fined every year for the past five years, Kao said, so the labor department and the hospital should conduct a review and improve the situation.
After a traffic accident this week allegedly caused by an overworked driver, she asked that strict labor inspections be enforced on the transportation industry.
Taipei City Hospital deputy superintendent Huang Tsun-cheng (黃遵誠) said the hospital used to have a flexible working hours system, so that the average daily working hours is eight hours.
The hospital scrapped the system this year at the behest of the labor department.
Huang Yu-ming (黃毓銘), a section chief at the labor department, said working hours have always been key to the department’s inspections and it plans to perform stricter and more frequent labor inspections on companies in the transportation industry starting next month.
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