The Council of Labor Affairs yesterday denied reports that it plans to revamp the minimum wage system by setting different wage levels according to geographic location.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) reported yesterday that the council was planning to differentiate minimum wage levels for northern, central, southern and eastern Taiwan.
It also reported that different minimum wage levels would be set for different groups of workers, such as young, female, disabled and elderly workers.
The council called a press conference yesterday morning to rebut the report, saying it had no plans to set different levels because the composition of the nation's workforce changes very quickly and the period that the average worker holds on to the same job is quite short.
It added that such a plan would be unnecessarily troublesome for the government, as well as for businesses and workers.
“Regarding the decision-making process of the adjustment to the minimum wage, the council will only make changes to the composition of the minimum wage committee, not to the method of adjustment and the calculation of the minimum wage,” council Deputy Minister Pan Shih-wei (潘世偉) said.
As for whether the minimum wage would be adjusted this year, Pan said a decision would be made by the committee as a whole.
Last month, council Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) said the council was mulling changing the composition of the minimum wage committee by decreasing the proportion of government officials and having the committee made up mainly of representatives from labor, business and academia.
The council said it was considering changing the structure following criticism that it had given its own officials a majority of the seats.
A minimum wage adjustment meeting is held every year in July. The minimum monthly wage of NT$17,280 has remained the same since it was last raised in 2007.
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