A policy requiring all workers to have two days off a week will be adopted by 2016 at the latest, Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) said yesterday.
Wang said the policy could be put into practice prior to 2016 if a consensus is reached between employers and employees and if the government’s complementary measures are announced ahead of time.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is seeking re-election, pledged to push for the policy on Thursday at a news conference held to announce his “golden decade” prospects.
When asked by reporters to elaborate yesterday, Wang reiterated the goals in Ma’s platform in 2008, which were to first encourage companies to lower the average working hours and then ask them to grant employees two days off a week.
About 55 percent of the nation’s companies already meet the two-days-off standard, Wang said, but the government’s goal is to have all companies implement the policy by 2016.
However, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was skeptical that the Ma administration would carry out its pledge if re-elected in January.
DPP Legislator Tsai Huang--liang (蔡煌瑯) yesterday questioned Ma’s determination on the issue, accusing his administration of not reducing working hours and not making it a requirement that all workers have two days off a week during his presidency.
He said it was unlikely that Ma would implement the policy five years from now.
Labor groups also expressed disappointment over the policy’s proposed timeline. They called it “unacceptable” and questioned why workers were being asked to wait another five years when government employees have been taking two days off a week for the past 10 years.
Taiwanese workers work more hours than their counterparts in South Korea, Japan and China, which have a maximum 40-hour work week, but less hours than workers in Singapore, where maximum working hours are capped at 44 hours per week.
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