The long-criticized policy that increases in the nation’s minimum wage are conditional on cumulative consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 3 percent or higher was finally addressed by the government amid speculation that it was an election-driven move.
Several labor groups on Friday welcomed Premier Jiang Yi-huah’s (江宜樺) instruction to the Ministry of Labor earlier that day that it should review the mandatory wage level, given soaring food prices, even though the inflation threshold has not been met.
Jiang said he felt “uneasy” about not raising minimum wage under the circumstances because rising food prices will hit vulnerable workers, who most need the protection of the minimum wage, hardest.
However, suspicion has arisen that the rationale behind the move was to garner support for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the nine-in-one local elections on Nov. 29, since food prices have not just begun rising recently.
Whatever the reason, it provided a new opportunity to re-examine the chronic problem of the minimum wage being indexed to economic indicators such as inflation, GDP and employment, while it is actually decided at the Basic Wage Deliberation Committee, where the government has the upper hand to set the level. It is a far cry from the concept of an adequate living wage determined by using a formula to make sure workers and their families can afford a basic, but decent, life considered acceptable by society at its current level of economic development, as the International Labor Organization has suggested.
Labor groups have said that the current monthly minimum wage of NT$19,273 is NT$4,472 short of a minimum living wage if the national poverty line and household size are taken into account.
In Taiwan, the lack of laws to protect the rights and interests of domestic workers and caregivers, mostly migrant labor, represents another gap in the coverage of international labor standards.
The latest in a slew of critiques was the Annual Report on International Religious Freedom released by the US Department of State at the end of last month.
The report stated that Taiwan does not guarantee domestic service workers and caregivers a right to a day off under its labor law, making it difficult or impossible for such workers to attend religious services.
The Ministry of Labor completely missed the point by responding that it has never received a complaint from any migrant workers about discrimination on the grounds of religion and beliefs during the period under the US review.
Other violations of labor rights of migrant workers have been repeatedly thrust in the international spotlight, including working time, overtime payment and exploitative labor brokerage practices, but the government has not given much weight to those issues.
The draft act on protection of domestic workers proposed by the Ministry of Labor to the Cabinet is seen as toothless and ineffective because instead of having provisions to ensure that employers meet their legal obligations, it leaves a final decision on the working conditions to be negotiated between the worker and the employer.
Even so, the act has never been put up for discussion at a Cabinet meeting since its inception about 10 years ago. It is not an issue that interests lawmakers either. To date, only two lawmaker-initiated bills have been proposed.
As of March, the number of foreign migrant workers residing in Taiwan surpassed 502,966, with 210,669 working as domestic service workers or caregivers.
Given the right to vote, they would have made an influential population of great interest to politicians. Since that is not the case, it seems that politicians do not feel “uneasy” about the situation migrant workers are in.
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
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