The least desirable Mid-Autumn Festival gift for office workers was a box of traditional mooncakes and the most desired was cash or gift certificates, a survey released by online job bank yes123 showed.
The survey conducted by the online job board gauged full-time office workers’ opinions on Mid-Autumn Festival bonuses given by companies and their desired gifts.
The survey showed that the three least desirable Mid-Autumn Festival gifts were traditional mooncakes at 34.9 percent, pomeloes at 27.8 percent and liquor at 21.2 percent.
However, the most popular gifts given by companies during Mid-Autumn Festival are traditional mooncakes at 54 percent, pineapple or egg yolk pastries at 45 percent, and pomeloes at 33 percent.
The survey showed that 41.5 percent of office workers wanted cash or gift certificates, 22.6 percent wanted giftboxes of sweets or cookies, 21.5 percent wanted ice cream mooncakes, 16.5 percent wanted cultural or creative products and 13.9 percent wanted a coffee giftbox for the festival season.
Although cash is preferred by employees, only 61.8 percent of the companies in the survey are giving a Mid-Autumn Festival bonus this year; 27.2 percent of companies said they would only give a gift and no cash bonus would be given, and 11 percent said that employees would not receive anything for the holiday.
Yes123 spokesperson Yang Tsung-pin (楊宗斌) said the average Mid-Autumn Festival bonus that office workers are to receive this year is NT$1,361 (US$41.33) — a decrease of 33.4 percent compared with NT$2,045 last year.
In addition, 48.6 percent of surveyed companies said a bonus of between NT$800 and NT$1,200 is to be given to employees for the holiday, while 19.6 percent are to give between NT$500 and NT$800, and 7.5 percent are to give between NT$2,000 and NT$3,000.
Yang said the results could indicate that even if companies are doing well in the first half of the year, they are still concerned about economic slowdown in the second half and are taking a more conservative approach to holiday bonuses and gifts.
The survey was conducted between Sept. 8 and Sept. 17 online, with 1,696 valid responses from office workers and 865 from companies.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by