Academics and labor activists yesterday said that in the three years from 2006 to last year, the number of temporary and dispatched workers in the country rose by as much as 169 percent and pointed to the mass hiring of such workers by government agencies as the main culprit.
Addressing a forum organized by Taiwan Thinktank, panelists called on the government to stop setting a bad example by hiring temporary and contract workers and proposing laws that only exacerbate the current situation.
Contract, temporary and dispatched workers are grouped under the category of atypical labor and have recently been used as a popular belt-tightening measure by businesses and the public sector, allowing them to increase manpower while minimizing costs associated with worker salaries, benefits and liabilities.
Liu Chin-hsin (劉進興), convener of Taiwan Thinktank’s social and humanities group, said conservative estimates showed that the central government hired 3,974 dispatched workers in 2006, a figure that last year grew 43 percent to 5,686. The total number of dispatched workers also increased from 126,000 in 2006 to 339,000 last year, a 169 percent increase.
“The government mistakenly believes that flexibility is unavoidable, that temporary and dispatched labor is the key to creating employment and economic prosperity,” Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said. “However, employers that aim to minimize labor costs by choosing flexibility are doing so at the expense of the welfare of workers who are the most disadvantaged and marginalized.”
Taiwan Labor and Social Policy Research Association executive director Chang Feng-yi (張烽益) said the large income disparity the nation was already experiencing would only worsen if the government proceeds with plans to create a “wide-open door” for companies seeking to hire dispatched workers.
The Council of Labor Affairs, which held hearings recently to discuss a proposal to amend the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) that would include regulations and restrictions on the use of contract and temporary workers by businesses and hiring agencies, has proposed changes including capping the percentage of a company’s contract workforce at 3 percent. However, a firm would still be able to hire contract workers totaling up to 20 percent of its total workforce provided it receives union approval and a majority of employees are union members.
The changes would also prohibit hiring contract workers in certain industries such as the medical, security, airline, marine, public transportation and coal mining sectors.
Labor experts said the council’s list of industries that are not permitted to use contract labor effectively gives all other companies a green light to legally hire such workers, which may cause a large increase in non-standard employment across a wide variety of industries and more exploitation. They called on government officials to put a stop to such worker exploitation.
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