The Council of Labor Affairs is mulling heavier punishments for employers or managers who are found responsible for the death of an employee from overwork, council Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) said yesterday.
She made the announcement while answering questions from lawmakers and reporters at a meeting of the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee.
Following a series of widely reported cases of death from overwork, especially in high-technology industries, labor groups have in recent months called for tighter regulations to protect workers from being worked to death.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
They have also lobbied for harsher penalties against employers who have directly or indirectly contributed to excessive overtime work, resulting in health issues or even death for the employees.
“The council is in discussion with labor and legal experts to explore the possibility of imposing criminal liability for employers who have contributed to workers’ death from overwork, in addition to heavier monetary penalties,” Wang said.
However, because three rulings must be passed before a defendant may be found guilty of a criminal offense, it could take years before justice is served to victimized employees, so this may not be the most efficient way to take care of such matters, she said.
The council said last week it planned to revise the law to increase the fines to NT$200,000 for businesses abusing “the system of job responsibility” and ignoring the health of their employees.
In its present form, the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) stipulates a maximum fine of NT$60,000 for employers who abuse the system.
Critics ask why an employee’s health could be worth so little, especially in light of the recent deaths blamed on overwork.
The latest council statistics show the average Taiwanese worker put in 2,156 hours on the job in 2008, or about 41 hours per week, which is about 20 percent more than workers in Japan and 50 percent more than those in Germany.
Wang also said the Act contained loopholes such as Article 84-1, which states that workers in certain industries “may arrange their own working hours, regular days off, national holidays and female workers’ night work through other agreements with their employers.”
The article has been widely criticized as providing a legal way for private security firms to exploit their guards, since such jobs are categorized as “monitoring or intermittent jobs” and therefore fall into this category.
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