The Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD,
The CEPD said that it is adopting the new policies in order to keep in step with the international trends towards liberalization and added that the competitiveness and returns on the funds must increase. The CEPD also claimed that setting assured rates of returns on the funds was "a lazy regulation."
These four funds are both public and social funds and consist of money deducted from workers' wages to provide workers and civil servants with retirement pensions, etc. The nature of the funds is not "competitive" or "profit-oriented." Rather, they should provide stable returns to protect the basic rights of workers.
The first wave of economic and financial crises has swept around the globe, and more and more people are realizing the damage that financial speculation has upon peoples' lives. Yet the CEPD is steaming ahead and allowing the funds to enter into speculative markets, something we have no choice but to question and oppose. In addition, the abolishment of the assured rate of return violates the second clause of Article 56 of the Labor Standards Act.
Some of the media has stated that the government should, "establish a healthy mechanism for managing long-term investments with the public funds."
We agree that the funds should not be viewed as the private property of the fund managers and that information about the funds should be both public and transparent. We believe the management of the funds should not be monopolized by the government.
We also advocate that labor representatives also take part in the supervision of these funds. Labor reps should make up two-thirds of the seats on the committee managing the labor pension fund, instead of the one-fifteenth at present. The present Labor Standards Law clearly states that pension funds held by businesses should be managed by a committee with at least two-thirds representation by labor.
Giving management of the funds to the workers is nothing more than returning what is rightly theirs. This should be the starting point for any reforms to the management of public funds.
Yang Wei-chung is executive secretary of the National Confederation of Trade Unions (
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