Labor groups and academics yesterday increased pressure on the government to find solutions to the growing problem of occupational deaths and injuries associated with overwork at the workplace.
The Council of Labor Affairs announced recently that it had made it easier for families to obtain compensation from employers in cases where a worker dies from job-related factors, such as excessively long work hours, extreme job-related stress and a long-term history of excessive overtime.
To accomplish this, the council said it would shift the burden of proof onto employers, meaning that if an employer proved unable to provide evidence that a worker was not overworked, the council would side with the employee by default.
Currently, if an employee or his or her family are unable to produce evidence that proves that prior to a work-related injury or death the employee had put in long work hours resulting in exhaustion, it is virtually impossible to successfully obtain compensation from the employer.
During a panel discussion on occupational safety and health, labor experts said the nation often topped a global list of countries with the highest average hours of work, which illustrated a tendency among Taiwanese employers to overwork their employees, while there is little to no protection against such labor practices.
“The problem of deaths from overwork have always existed, but it has only recently come to the -attention of labor officials after several cases were picked up by media,” Taiwan Labor Front secretary--general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said.
Son said he was encouraged to see the government would loosen restrictions governing the definition of death from overwork and make compensation more readily available to victims and their families.
To avoid repeat violations, he also urged the government to issue heavier fines and punishments to employers with a bad history of overworking employees.
Cheng Ya-wen (鄭雅文), an associate professor at National Taiwan University’s Institute of Health Policy and Management, said the nation lagged behind other countries with similar long work hours in terms of the amount of compensation issued for occupational injury and death.
Last year, Cheng said, the nation approved only 478 cases of labor compensation for occupational injury and death — a rate of 5.3 employees per 10,000 workers, which is lower than Japan and South Korea.
The labor experts also attributed the problem to abuse by Taiwanese employers of the “system of work responsibility.”
Some employers, they said, are using this system as a way to demand workers put in excessive overtime to fulfill their work responsibilities.
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