In a bid to address potential labor disputes and minimize the effects of strikes, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday met with representatives from the Chunghwa Postal Workers’ Union, the Chunghwa Telecom Workers’ Union, the Taiwan Railway Labor Union, the Taiwan Highway Workers’ Union, the Taoyuan International Airport Corporation Trade Union, the Taiwan International Ports Corporation Enterprise Trade Union, the EVA Air Union, the Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions and the Chinese Federation of Labor.
Before the meeting, Lin told reporters that a ministry task force had visited members of the unions in light of the effect that strikes have had on society.
The task force is seeking to understand issues that concern unions and adopt a preventive approach to resolve labor disputes, Lin said.
Photo: Chen Yi-chia, Taipei Times
Representatives are encouraged to speak up and the ministry is to compile their statements for consideration, he said.
“While employees are a company’s most important assets, there must also be a balance between employees’ interests and the rights of people using transportation services,” he said.
Unions have the right to organize strikes, but the government needs to have a mechanism so that, for example, people with flight tickets would not be forced to change their travel plans because of changes or cancelations.
Labor legislation has a mechanism for giving notice of a strike, but that process can take one to two years, he said, adding that union representatives should work to minimize uncertainty among ticket holders and workers in the face of impending strike action.
“We hope to protect workers’ rights while minimizing the impact on society in general,” he said.
EVA Air Corp flight attendants are negotiating with the airline’s management and have said they would not exclude the possibility of a strike if the airline’s offers do not meet their expectations.
EVA Air Union representative Lin Yu-chia (林昱嘉) said that the ministry should withdraw its support for the proposed policy of requiring unions to give notice of labor action, which would harm workers’ rights.
Such a policy was not needed when China Airlines’ (CAL) flight attendants went on strike in 2016, Lin Yu-chia said.
The EVA Air Union has four major requests, she said.
The gap between its workers’ salaries and those at CAL should be smaller and the government should ask EVA to adjust flight schedules that lead to flight attendants being overworked, she said.
CAL was found to have overworked its employees 120 times last year, she said.
EVA’s management also inappropriately interviewed applicants for flight attendant positions, Lin Yu-chia said, adding that employees should be allowed to attend disciplinary meetings to ensure transparency.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS