After a long wait, teachers in Taiwan officially established their national trade union yesterday after a legal revision that took effect on May 1 finally allowed teachers to unionize.
The National Teachers’ Union (NTU), a successor of the National Teachers’ Association formed 12 years ago, pledged in its inaugural statement to help open a new era in the country’s education system while seeking better protection for teachers’ rights.
However, the amended Labor Union Act (工會法) does not allow teachers’ unions to stage strikes, unlike workers in other industries.
Council of Labor Affairs Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) said this provision was mainly to ensure that the right to education for students will not be compromised.
Wang said the NTU was the first step to better protect the basic rights of teachers and that teachers can seek to resolve their disputes with management by way of arbitration.
“In the long run, teachers may one day be given the right to strike,” Wang said.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said that teaching has been a “profession of conscience” and that teachers’ rights and well-being should be better protected with the establishment of unions.
He expressed the hope that teachers’ unions could serve as the promoters of a harmonious relationship between management and labor, rather than an adversarial one, so that education could become a driving force for national development.
In a press statement, Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said the NTU would serve as a platform for dialogue within the education sector.
She pledged that her party would fully cooperate with teachers’ unions in cultivating the next generation of talent for the country if she wins the presidency.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
China has reserved offshore airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts that are usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. The alerts, known as notice to air missions (NOTAMs), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert
RSS