A coalition of labor rights groups yesterday called for a law to require companies to give employees time off during typhoons or other natural disasters.
Undeterred by rain and wind brought by Typhoon Mitag, the Sales Worker Union, Taipei City Confederation of Trade Unions, Awakening Foundation and other labor rights groups yesterday morning rallied outside the Legislative Yuan, holding placards urging a bill to be passed in the current legislative session.
When Typhoon Lekima struck Taiwan on Aug. 9, the government declared a typhoon day in eight cities and counties in northern Taiwan, the Sales Worker Union said.
Photo: CNA
However, a survey by the union found that 96.4 percent of clerks at department stores were still instructed by their employer to go to work, the union said.
Working on a typhoon day puts employees at great risk and could even cost them their lives, it said.
According to the Guidelines for Workers’ Attendance Management and Wages (天然災害發生事業單位勞工出勤管理及工資給付要點), workers can choose not to work on official typhoon days and employers are banned from treating it as absence without leave, but there is no punishment for employers who contravene the rules, the union said.
During typhoons Meranti and Malakas in 2016, 92 percent of department store clerks worked even though the government declared a typhoon day, and of them, 78 percent said they were not paid more or given any compensation, another union survey found.
Among the small percentage of store clerks who were given a typhoon day off, some had a day docked from their paid annual leave, the survey found.
Legislators from the Democratic Progressive Party, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party have together proposed seven versions of a bill for typhoon days, the union said.
All versions shared provisions that would guarantee employees the right to take a paid day off on government-designated typhoon days, it said.
They also required companies to pay their employees double and provide means or compensation for transportation if their staff chose to work on a typhoon day, the union said.
All seven versions have passed their first reading at the Legislative Yuan on Dec. 25, 2017, and need to be discusses at cross-caucus negotiations, it said.
As the current legislative session is the last before legislators’ terms end in January, the union urged them to begin cross-caucus negotiations soon.
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
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
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