Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday proposed a draft act promoting labor education.
The draft act was formulated by 26 DPP lawmakers, including Chung Kung-chao (鍾孔炤), Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤), Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國), Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅) and Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱).
Citing a recent incident in which an overworked truck driver killed two police officers and another truck driver on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1), Chung said that many employers can barely regulate themselves no matter how many penalties they are asked to pay.
The driver’s employer has severely contravened provisions of the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) because the driver was found to have worked for 22 consecutive days, Chung said at a joint news conference held along with members of Taiwan Labour Front, the National Federation of Teachers Union and the Youth Synergy Taiwan Foundation.
The bill proposes that labor education be consolidated from bottom up, with schools including it in their curricular guidelines and classes on labor rights being set up in universities, he said.
It would require employers to attend training sessions when they apply for company registration, he said.
An increasing number of cases of labor act contraventions were due to employers’ unfamiliarity with labor regulations, and the unequal power relationship between employers and employees, Liu said
The draft act is designed to help workers know their rights by providing training sessions on the labor act, he said.
Employers would also be asked to attend those sessions, which might help boost their relationship with workers and create a harmonious working environment, he said.
Wu, one of the conveners of the Legislative Yuan’s Education and Culture Committee, called on the Ministry of Education to propose its own version of the draft act, adding that she would list the ministry’s draft in the committee’s agenda as soon as it is available.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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