Calls for pay raises continued yesterday as dozens of labor representatives staged a protest in front of the Council of Labor Affairs and pushed for a minimum wage hike to NT$22,115 per month.
With the pay for civil servants, who earn at least NT$35,000 per month, expected to rise by 3 percent, representatives from the Taiwan Labor Front, Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions, Taiwan Women’s Link and several other civic groups called for an increase in the minimum wage from the current NT$17,880.
“Even though businesses are making more money, they rarely reward workers at the bottom,” Taiwan Labour Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said.
Photo: Liao Chien-ying, Taipei Times
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Son said that those who earn the minimum wage are the most disadvantaged workers and have the least negotiating power when it comes to asking for raises.
As such, an upward adjustment of the minimum wage would benefit those who need it the most, Son said.
After being frozen for more than three years, the minimum wage was adjusted from NT$17,280 to NT$17,880 effective Jan. 1 this year. Labor groups called the NT$600 adjustment a “mockery,” saying it was hardly enough to cover rising consumer prices.
Aside from the low minimum wage, workers face a host of other problems, such as death or illness from overwork, unpaid leave and little or no benefits for temporary, contract and dispatch employees, the groups said.
REAL WAGES DOWN
Data from the Directorate--General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed that after inflation was factored in, real wages for workers in Taiwan had declined by more than NT$100 per month from the period prior to the global financial crisis.
Income disparity also reached new highs in 2009, with the top 10 percent of wage earners receiving 28 times the salary of the lowest 10 percent, according to data from the Ministry of Finance.
The income share of the top 5 percent reached almost 75 times that of the bottom 5 percent, an increase from 65 times in 2008, the figures showed.
While average incomes dropped overall in 2009 following a global recession, the lower salaries disproportionately affected low-wage earners, with the bottom 10 percent earning about 20 percent less than they did in 2008.
The bottom 10 percent earned an average total of NT$99,000 in 2009, compared with NT$2.81 million (US$96,800) for the highest 10 percent, who earned about 13 percent less that year than in 2008.
Son said an estimated 5,000 people would take to the streets in Taipei in an annual May Day parade to urge the government to put an end to the problem of the working poor.
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