The government should take care of both management and workers, rather than pit them against each other, People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜) said yesterday.
“Traditionally speaking, management are the parents the nation relies on for a living and labor its lifeblood. Both of them should be taken cared of and that is the role the government ought to play,” Soong said.
Soong said the government should refrain from provoking division between employers and employees, but instead endeavor to create a mutually beneficial partnership between them.
Photo: CNA
Soong made the remarks on the sidelines of a forum with the nation’ seven major industrial groups in Taipei yesterday afternoon, including the Chinese National Federation of Industries, the General Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of China and the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises.
The PFP chairman is the second presidential candidate to attend the forum, following Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who participated in the event on Tuesday against the backdrop of protests staged by labor groups outside.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) is scheduled to attend the forum on Tuesday next week.
Turning to the legislature’s recent passage of a draft amendment to the Act for Development of Small and Medium Enterprises (中小企業發展條例) to allow companies to claim salary increases as tax-deductible expenses, Soong said even a well-meant policy could cause many unwanted side effects if implemented without supplementary measures.
He cited as an example “the controversy-dogged capital gains tax, which was proposed and then thrown away by the government.”
“This kind of policy is the last thing leaders of industry and commerce want to see. Corporations require prudent policies rather than little moments of bliss,” Soong said.
Asked whether he would push for an electricity price hike if elected, Soong said that price increases should be imposed in a rational manner.
At the forum, Soong said that while he was strongly opposed to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, he would not scrap nuclear power altogether before alternative energy sources were in place.
He proposed pushing for the development of energy efficiency and green architecture.
Taiwan International Workers’ Association policy researcher Chen Hsiu-lien (陳秀蓮) questioned Soong’s determination to take care of workers.
“It is easy to pay lip service to the protection of labor rights and welfare, but I have yet to see Soong propose any concrete policies that would help translate his words into actions,” Chen said.
Chen said if the government really treated workers as the nation’s lifeblood, it would not have given corporations whatever they asked for, from tax deductions and salary reductions, to cutting the number of officially designated holidays per year by seven days to implement a universal 40-hour workweek.
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