About 400 government contract workers yesterday rallied outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei to demand better work conditions that meet the minimum standards stipulated in the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Low-level government staff hired on short-term contracts for non-regular positions are not protected by the act, but by regulations for public-sector employees, Kaohsiung National Taxation Bureau Union president Chen Hsueh-chin (陳雪琴) said.
The regulations clearly define the workers’ obligations, but are elusive on their rights, which have turned contract employees into easy targets for exploitation, she said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“The government has been exploiting its contract workers to cut costs and all we ask is that the most basic work conditions stipulated in the Labor Standards Act are guaranteed,” Chen said.
There are more than 20,000 government contract workers nationwide, accounting for 5 percent of all civil servants, the union said.
They are typically hired on annual contracts, but many have been working in the same agency for decades, it said.
The contract workers have long been demanding that they be treated according to the act, as it would significantly increase their pensions and paid time off, saying that blue-collar workers in the public sector are covered by the act.
According to Ministry of Civil Service regulations, a contract workers who retires at the age of 65 after working 40 years at a government agency would receive a lump-sum pension of only NT$400,000 (US$13,031), the union said.
In contrast, a formal employee working in maintenance at the same agency would receive a payment of up to NT$1.8 million, it said.
In the event of a work-related death, a contract employee’s family members would be compensated only 10 months of salary, or about NT$300,000, while those of a maintenance worker would be compensated 40 months of salary, or at least NT$1.2 million, the union said.
In addition, the act grants regular employees up to one year of sick leave days over two years, but contract employees are only allowed to take up to 30 days of sick leave over the same period, it said.
The protesters’ calls for better work conditions received support from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators who joined the rally.
The government “does not even need to amend any laws to settle the matter. Officials from the Ministry of Civil Service, Ministry of Labor and Directorate-General of Personnel Administration only need to have a meeting,” KMT caucus whip Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) told the protesters.
“Their reluctance to do so shows that the government does not care about its employees. If that is the case, what can we expect it to do for other workers?” he said.
KMT legislators promised to improve contract employees’ labor rights and said they would hold a public hearing with the union at the legislature within the next three weeks.
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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