Pan-green camp lawmakers yesterday said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) should both be held accountable for the reported suspension of a planned minimum wage hike, an action the lawmakers said “betrayed the nation’s workers.”
Wang was reportedly upset about her inability to reverse Minister Without Portfolio Kuan Chung-ming’s (管中閔) opposition to the proposal to raise the minimum monthly wage to NT$19,047 (US$650) next year from the current NT$18,780.
“We want to express our anger to the Premier Sean Chen (陳冲)-led Cabinet — an administration dominated by corporate interests — and call for Minister Wang to resign,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) told a press conference.
The alleged suspension, Tsai said, was “another bounced check” among Ma’s campaign pledges, which promised to raise hourly wages to NT$115.
DPP lawmakers also issued a warning to Chen about the scheduled electricity rate increase on Dec. 10 and advised the administration to call off the increase.
The government’s insistence on raising fuel and electricity prices was the primary reason for domestic inflation rising this year, Tsai said, adding that “there is no doubt that the government is the prime culprit of current levels of inflation and the stagnant economy.”
“If the administration does not freeze the planned increase of electricity rates before the new legislative session opens on Tuesday, we will not hesitate to stage the strongest protest possible against the Premier’s scheduled report to the legislature,” Tsai said.
While the Ma administration said it planned to raise the wages “once the economic climate gets better,” it said earlier this year that the fuel and electricity prices hikes “could not wait,” DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said.
“That pretty much tells you the nature of this government — the profit of corporations is always higher on the agenda than people’s livelihoods,” Huang added.
The CLA’s plan is “humble” compared to labor rights groups’ recommendation of a minimum monthly wage of NT$23,151, but the Executive Yuan would not even approve the watered down plan despite labor groups being ready to accept it, DPP Legislator Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤) said.
Taiwan Solidarity Union caucus whip Huang Wen-ling (黃文玲) said Wang should resign for failing to safeguard workers’ rights, which is meant to be the ministry’s primary mission.
COLLABORATION: As TSMC is building an advanced wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, it needs to build a comprehensive supply chain in Europe, Joseph Wu said Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech Republic to build a semiconductor cluster in the European country, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Friday. Wu, who led a Taiwanese delegation at the annual GLOBSEC Forum held in Prague from Friday to today, said in a news conference that Taiwan seeks to foster cooperation between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and its counterparts in Czechia. Such cooperation is expected to transform the country into one of the most important semiconductor clusters in Europe over the next three to five years, he added. As TSMC is building an advanced
A joint declaration by Pacific leaders was reissued yesterday morning with mentions of Taiwan removed after China slammed an earlier version as a “mistake” that “must be corrected.” After five days of talks in Tonga, a “cleared” communique was released on Friday that reaffirmed a 30-year-old agreement allowing Taiwan to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). However, the wording immediately raised the ire of Chinese diplomats, who piled pressure on Pacific leaders to amend the document. The forum reissued the communique without explanation yesterday morning, conspicuously deleting the paragraph concerning the bloc’s “relations with Taiwan.” “It must be a
A tropical depression in waters east of the Philippines could develop into a tropical storm as soon as today and bring rainfall as it approaches, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, while issuing heat warnings for 14 cities and counties. Weather model simulations show that there are still considerable differences in the path that the tropical depression is projected to take. It might pass through the Bashi Channel to the South China Sea or turn northeast and move toward the sea south of Japan, CWA forecaster Yeh Chih-chun (葉致均) said, adding that the uncertainty of its movement is still high,
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
RSS