In terms of the new five-day workweek system, two surveys released last week are an indication of how good intentions can lead to unforeseen consequences.
The policy of “one fixed day off and one flexible rest day” every seven days has not worked as hoped, and has angered more people than it has pleased. It has given employers less flexibility to arrange work schedules and reduced some workers’ incomes. Ironically, it is low-paid, marginal workers, who theoretically should benefit the most from such a policy, who are suffering the most.
The first survey, among employers by the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, showed that 86.3 percent of firms in the manufacturing sector and 77.3 percent in the non-manufacturing sector find managing their operating costs and employee shifts more challenging as a result of the new labor rules.
The second survey, jointly released by online human resources advisory firm 1111 Job Bank and Chinese-language weekly Business Today, showed that 56 percent of office workers said their lives had been negatively affected by the new system since it was put into effect six months ago, about 45 percent of office workers had seen their incomes drop and 35 percent felt it necessary to seek additional income by moonlighting because they were deprived of overtime work.
The surveys also revealed that 78 percent of office workers felt that the relationship between employers and workers was growing more tense due to the new policy, while the chief human resource officers of 17 leading local businesses believed that the new workweek poses a major stumbling block for the development of innovative industries in Taiwan.
From employers to workers, from small to large companies and from local to foreign businesses, over the past six months, complaints about the new labor law have been ceaseless.
The policy was originally devised to ameliorate the very real issue of long working hours, but it ended up undermining both employment and wages. There is no question that the government intended to help workers — especially those who were being exploited by their employers — but it came up with a more rigid and complicated system, which has generated a lot of public discontent and hurt the government’s approval ratings.
In retrospect, the new labor rules were fundamentally the outcome of political fights late last year between the ruling and opposition parties and between pro-business and labor-rights advocates.
When laws are imposed on individuals and groups for political reasons, legislators tend to neglect the different needs of individuals and give less than thorough consideration to the demands of various groups. Of course, political compromise is inevitable in a democratic society, but regulation should be kept to a minimum and limited to issues with a broad consensus, as US economist Milton Friedman once said.
The issue shows that the government is facing a dilemma: It cannot possibly expect workers to work less and enjoy better pay unless there is a sea-change in the nation’s industrial structure. Therefore, the government should allow employers and workers to reach a consensus on how their rest days should be allocated and how overtime pay should be calculated, based on the nature of each specific industry and the exact work of each employee. The government should only intervene when such a consensus is not feasible.
It is not difficult to see that the government’s one-size-fits-all approach to labor reforms is not going to work.
The government’s “paternalistic approach” holds back innovation and the service sector, which it says it wishes to encourage, the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei said in its annual White Paper last month.
It is necessary for the government to amend the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) again — and the earlier the better.
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