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.
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