The Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union yesterday criticized China Airlines, saying that it has been settling scores with union members, and used a protest on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei to call for better working conditions.
In June 2016, when the union launched a strike to negotiate better pay for its flight attendants, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) promised to reform the airline and improve employees’ rights, union secretary-general Cheng Ya-ling (鄭雅菱) said.
However, employees are still overworked and punished whenever they ask for better work conditions, she said.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
Over the past two years, as many as nine union members have been subject to disciplinary measures for suggesting policies to improve labor rights and flight safety, she said, adding that four of them are on the verge of losing their jobs.
Flight attendants Steven Chang (張書元), Lin Hsin-yi (林馨怡) and Chu Liang-chun (朱良駿) received written warnings for participating in a protest against overwork in June last year, China Airlines Employee Union deputy secretary-general Huang Hui-chen (黃慧甄) said.
Meanwhile, China Airlines union secretary-general Chu Mei-hsueh (朱梅雪) has been charged for slander over a union periodical he published, she said, adding that more employees — including pilots and ground staff — have been punished for simply criticizing the company.
“The company is always checking the union’s Facebook page and anyone who posts anything critical about the company will be asked to meet with upper management,” she said.
Although the local labor department has ruled many of the company’s disciplinary measures illegal, none of them have been revoked, because the firm is rich enough to pay all the fines, she added.
The airline is also preparing to launch an intern flight attendant program, which could undermine flight safety and encourage worker exploitation, the union said.
Under the program, beginning next month, interns who are to be paid only one-third a full-time flight attendant’s salary would be working on board for 60 hours per month, the union said.
The program would not be regulated, since it has not been approved by the Civil Aeronautics Administration and a draft act on internships has not yet been passed by the Legislative Yuan, the union said.
“Interns should not be used to replace full-time on-board staff. One plane should have no more than one intern flight attendant, and for every intern, the company should assign an additional full-time flight attendant to supervise and assist them,” Cheng said.
Moreover, the government should pass a law to guarantee time off for employees on government-designated typhoon days to better protect their safety, she said.
Most airlines do not grant employees time off on typhoon days unless they provide evidence that the road to work is blocked or destroyed, she said.
To fulfill its promise to reform the airline and improve flight attendants’ rights, the Tsai administration should regulate China Airlines’ use of interns and pass a typhoon law, she added.
China Airlines was founded with government funds in 1959 and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications remains a major shareholder.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not