People working with Taiwan’s major food delivery platforms on Tuesday pledged to form a union to demand fair pay and called for legislative action.
At a news conference outside the Ministry of Labor building in Taipei, organizers called on people who work with Foodpanda Taiwan Co (富胖達) and Uber Eats Taiwan to sign up for the proposed National Delivery Industrial Union.
The main purpose of the union is to increase delivery drivers’ leverage in negotiating for fair pay rules with the two platforms, said Su Po-hao (蘇柏豪), the group’s spokesman.
Photo: CNA
Last month, Foodpanda introduced new pay rules, citing better compensation for drivers who dispatch orders with pickups far from their destinations the main reason, said Chen Yu-an (陳昱安), another group member.
A few weeks later, Uber Eats did the same, saying that the new rules would encourage drivers to take orders during peak times, Chen said.
However, service fees were reduced, Su said.
Drivers for Foodpanda in Taichung, as well as Changhua and Nantou counties, faced a pay decrease of 10 to 30 percent last month, while Uber Eats deliverers in Taipei, New Taipei City and Keelung saw similar drops, he said.
Drivers usually have no idea how the platforms gauge their service fees, Chen said.
After updating the rules this month, Uber Eats no longer reveals the makeup of a driver’s service fee for each order, he said.
The union would also seek to lobby the ministry and lawmakers to propose legislation for food deliveries and protect drivers’ rights, they said.
The number of food deliverers in Taiwan had increased to 88,000 as of the end of last year, ministry data showed.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
RSS