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.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
RSS