Nearly 20 percent of workers on parental leave these days are men, Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) said yesterday.
Wang said that when the parental leave program without the subsidy was introduced, only about 3,000 employees applied. However, since the subsidy’s introduction, 37,000 have received approval to take part in the plan, 20 percent of them men, she said.
Graphic designer Chen Chien-liang (陳建良) is one father benefiting from the program, having been on subsidized parental leave for seven months as he takes unpaid leave from the media company he works for to care for his two young children.
Under the plan, aimed at encouraging young couples to start families, Chen receives a subsidy equal to 60 percent of his monthly salary from the Employment Insurance Program, an incentive that has boosted participation numbers.
When the parental leave subsidy program was first conceived, critics were worried it would favor employees of state-run enterprises, but that concern has been dispelled, Wang said yesterday.
Among approved applicants, 55.7 percent were workers at private companies with fewer than 30 employees and 44.3 percent were workers at companies with more than 30 employees. Employees of state-run enterprises, government agencies and schools accounted for only 2.66 percent of the total, Wang said.
Worries that companies would lay off employees who took advantage of the program have also proven unfounded.
“More than 90 percent of those who took six months of parental leave have successfully returned to their jobs,” Wang said.
The subsidy program was designed to encourage working mothers and fathers to share the responsibility of child rearing and to allow both parents to request unpaid parental leave for up to two years until their children reach the age of three, Wang said. The Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別工作平等法) of 2002 makes this provision.
Based on the amendment to the Employment Insurance Act (就業保險法) passed by the Legislative Yuan in March last year, workers who have paid into Taiwan’s basic labor insurance program for at least a year are eligible for the parental leave subsidy for up to six months.
If two working parents rotate to take parental leave to take care of the same child, both parents are eligible for the subsidy, meaning the total subsidy received could be up to 12 months, according to the amendment.
Chen said he and his wife agreed after their second child’s birth that he would stay at home to take care of the children because his wife had a higher salary.
Meanwhile, Wang said yesterday that amended regulations governing other types of leave of absence had also taken effect.
The new rules allow working women to take up to a year of unpaid leave for pregnancy-related reasons and employees suffering from cancer to also take a year of unpaid leave.
Employers who fail to offer employees these privileges are subject to fines up to NT$60,000, Wang said.
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
‘NEVER!’ Taiwan FactCheck Center said it had only received donations from the Open Society Foundations, which supports nonprofits that promote democratic values Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC) has never received any donation from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a cofounder of the organization wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. The Taipei-based organization was established in 2018 by Taiwan Media Watch Foundation and the Association of Quality Journalism to monitor and verify news and information accuracy. It was officially registered as a foundation in 2021. National Chung Cheng University communications professor Lo Shih-hung (羅世宏), a cofounder and chairman of TFC, was responding to online rumors that the TFC receives funding from the US government’s humanitarian assistance agency via the Open Society Foundations (OSF),
ANNUAL LIGHT SHOW: The lanterns are exhibited near Taoyuan’s high-speed rail station and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the airport MRT line More than 400 lanterns are to be on display at the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival, which officially starts in Taoyuan today. The city is hosting the festival for the second time — the first time was in 2016. The Tourism Administration held a rehearsal of the festival last night. Chunghwa Telecom donated the main lantern of the festival to the Taoyuan City Government. The lanterns are exhibited in two main areas: near the high-speed rail (HSR) station in Taoyuan, which is at the A18 station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT, and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the MRT
An alleged US government plan to encourage Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to form a joint venture with Intel to boost US chipmaking would place the Taiwanese foundry giant in a more disadvantageous position than proposed tariffs on imported chips, a semiconductor expert said yesterday. If TSMC forms a joint venture with its US rival, it faces the risk of technology outflow, said Liu Pei-chen (劉佩真), a researcher at the Taiwan Industry Economics Database of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. A report by international financial services firm Baird said that Asia semiconductor supply chain talks suggest that the US government would