Hundreds of laid-off workers and labor rights advocates yesterday took part in an open-air banquet in front of the Presidential Office Building organized by the National Alliance for Workers of Closed Off Factories (NAWCF) to celebrate the workers’ victory in their legal battle against the government and to continue the fight for workers’ rights.
“Although we eventually won the lawsuit, I feel sad to call it a victory, because we have not won anything, we have just proven the fact that we do not owe the government any money,” Taoyuan Confederation of Trade Unions chairman Mao Chen-fei (毛振飛) told the crowd.
Mao said it was also sad because many workers had passed away before the day of victory, but he was glad that an elderly worker in Miaoli County was able to proudly tell his family from his sick bed that he has not owed anyone money during his whole life.
Photo: Kan Chih-chi, Taipei Times
Mao was referring to a dispute that started in 1996, when many factories went out of business and the owners absconded, while still owing employees’ salaries and retirement payouts.
Facing protests by the laid-off workers, the then-Council of Labor Affairs, now the Ministry of Labor, proposed giving the salaries and retirement payouts owed to the workers as loans, promising that their employers and not the workers, would have to repay the loan.
Despite that promise, in 2012 when the loan repayment deadline was up, the council did ask the workers to repay the loans since it had failed to secure payment from their former employers. The council also filed lawsuits against those who were unable or refused to pay.
The move triggered a series of demonstrations, until the government eventually decided to drop the lawsuits against the laid-off workers in March.
Chen Hsiu-lien (陳秀蓮), a spokeswoman for the NAWCF, said that food served in the banquet, including stir-fried rice noodles and meatball soup, are meaningful, since these were the same dishes prepared by the laid-off workers when they occupied the factories in protest 18 years ago.
“The banquet is to show our appreciation for all who participated or have helped us along the way,” she said. “We are also announcing that, though the problem for the laid-off workers has been solved, we will continue to help other workers still suffering, and will continue the campaign to revise the Labor Standards Act [勞動基準法] to better protect workers’ rights.”
NAWCF members also passed torches to laid-off freeway toll collectors, who have just recently started their campaign for their employment rights, symbolizing that they would pass on their experiences and help others.
Prior to the banquet, the NAWCF also demonstrated outside the ministry, urging it to apologize for its earlier demand that workers repay the loans, and called for a revision of labor laws.
They also threw dog and cat excrement toward the ministry’s building, accusing the ministry of failing to defend labor rights, calling it a “garbage ministry.”
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS