Ahead of next year’s presidential and legislative elections, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government has proposed several legislative amendments for pay raises and property tax reforms, as the ruling party attempts to stake its electoral future on helping workers suffering from stagnant wages, battling the high cost of housing and combating the rising wealth gap in Taiwan.
The proposed amendments to the Company Act (公司法), the Factory Act (工廠法), the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) and the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act (中小企業發展條例) — dubbed the “four laws for pay raises” — are waiting to clear the legislative floor, while the content of a draft bill to create a combined tax applicable to the sale of land and buildings — a replacement for current housing and land taxes — is still under deliberation by the Cabinet.
These populist bills are the KMT government’s best chance to listen to the public and address the issues of low wages and wealth distribution after its landslide defeat in the nine-in-one local elections in November last year. However, there are a plethora of potential pitfalls that could undermine the effectiveness of these bills, the biggest being feasibility and enforcement.
Several opposition lawmakers on Friday called for cross-party negotiations over these pay-raise bills, which are a necessary process before the bills are placed under further scrutiny. However, a surprising stall in the legislature on Friday was an indication of where these bills are heading when lawmakers get together to review them again.
It will take time to compel all companies to behave responsibly, but it is unrealistic to hope that the adoption of stricter laws and heavier penalties will immediately force companies to dole out dividends and bonuses to workers as expected.
Critics have pointed out to the KMT government over the past few months that these bills might win votes in the short term, but that the government’s meddling in corporate policies regarding dividends and bonus payouts will have serious side effects in the long run. If Taiwan has laws to guarantee better treatment for workers, but the government and businesses fail to enforce them and workers are left without their benefits — which is likely, based on the contents of the proposed amendments — then what is the point?
Earlier this month, KMT Legislator Tseng Chu-wei (曾巨威) publicly questioned his party’s intentions regarding the bills, saying they were just another example of the government’s short-sighted measures in recent years. Interestingly, Tseng, a retired finance professor, had not been featured in the news since he secured a legislator-at-large seat three years ago, but his serious criticism of the ruling party’s pay-raise legislation as “ineffective” and “deceptive” have indeed earned him a great deal of media attention lately.
Nonetheless, the issue surrounding the legislation does highlight some of the basic problems facing Taiwan’s policymaking — a process that is dominated by an opportunistic approach, conducted in a rash manner and lacking in foresight. Moreover, there seems to be no clear discussion of such pay-raise bills among Democratic Progressive Party and Taiwan Solidarity Union legislators, nor have opposition parties come up with corresponding proposals of their own, let alone offer new strategies to get workers out of the low-wage blues.
Even as the proposals have raised concerns about how reckless the policymaking process is in this government, a more serious concern is that these days lawmaking is full of political calculations by the major political parties and less about constructive discussion over public policy.
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