Several dozen protesting migrant workers from the Philippines and Indonesia yesterday said that they should be allowed to join a signature drive for a labor law referendum, calling for labor rights to be for all people, irrespective of nationality.
“Foreign workers have the same rights as local workers, because workers’ rights are human rights,” Gilda Banugan, chairperson of Migrante International’s Taiwan Chapter, said at a rally organized by the Taiwan International Workers’ Association outside Taipei Railway Station.
The protesters called on the government to recognize the validity of migrant workers’ signatures on a petition for a referendum that would repeal amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), which took effect on March 1.
Photo: CNA
The referendum would be held in tandem with November’s local elections.
The amendments were passed to allow more flexibility in scheduling overtime, but many labor groups objected to revisions that made 12 continuous days of work and only eight hours of rest between two shifts possible.
The revisions also raised the cap on overtime to 54 hours per month from 46 hours, but kept the limit at 138 hours for every three months.
Migrants who work in factories running on three eight-hour shifts are among the groups hit hardest by the eased restrictions on work hours, but they were never consulted on the changes, the association’s Chen Hsiu-lien (陳秀蓮) said.
The referendum petition, initiated by an alliance of labor groups and supported by smaller parties, is now in the second phase of signature collection
The number of signatures that are required for the petition to be considered a valid proposal is 1.5 percent of all eligible voters, or 280,000.
An Indonesian factory worker who identified himself as Iwan said that he hopes the government will be receptive to their demands and reconsider the newly amended provisions of the law, which favor employers over workers.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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
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The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift