Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should move immediately to ban “study assistantships” and withdraw related amendments to the University Act (大學法) upon taking office, labor advocates said yesterday.
About 10 representatives from university student unions gathered outside the DPP headquarters in Taipei, shouting that Tsai would not be given a “honeymoon” on labor rights issues.
“Tsai in her pledges to young people promised to use the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) for assistants and make universities assume the responsibilities of employers, and we want her to immediately implement those promises,” National Yang-Ming University labor rights working group member Su Tzu-hsuan (蘇子軒) said.
Controversy over the legal status of assistants erupted after the Ministry of Labor last year ruled that they should be counted as “labor” and be accorded attendant rights under the act, while the Ministry of Education encouraged universities to employ new “study assistants” outside the framework of the act, and advocated amending the University Act to grant schools exclusion clauses.
“The courses are just a fig leaf aimed at hiding the fact that schools act as students’ employers,” Su said, adding that more than 90 percent of his school’s assistantships had been transformed into “student assistantships” this year.
“There was absolutely no change in work content because of the new designation — schools are just using the new ‘practicums’ to prevaricate,” Su said.
The special courses for which “study assistants” are required to register are not graded, he said, adding that assistants are still often required to do work unrelated to their studies, with overdue wages another problem.
Taiwan Higher Education Union executive secretary Kao Shih-wen (高詩雯) said the situation for assistants would worsen if the ministry’s proposed amendments pass, calling for Tsai to withdraw them from consideration immediately after taking office.
“The amendments essentially give the ministry a blank check to write rules on the content of and compensation for work-study fellowships and scholarships,” she said, adding that fixed monthly “scholarships” combined with loose enforcement of working hours limitations could lead to compensation below the minimum wage.
This would mean that most assistantships would potentially be transformed into “work-study” programs to exempt them from labor rights guarantees.
“School have found ‘study assistantships’ inconvenient because there is still a substantial amount of administrative work necessary to set up courses and find professors,” she said, “If this law passes, they would be no need for these procedures.”
The DPP acknowledged it had made campaign promises to protect students’ labor rights, but said that detailed proposals had yet to be formulated.
“We promised during the election to include assistantships within the Labor Rights Act and support the labor rights of students,” said DPP Department of Youth Affairs deputy head Huang Shou-ta (黃守達), who formerly headed National Taiwan University’s student union.
DPP Department of Social Movement supervisor Lee Shih-ming (李世明) said the party has yet to stake a clear position on the future of “study assistantships,” other than advocating that substantive labor be accorded labor rights guarantees.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
PROCEDURE: Although there is already a cross-strait agreement in place for the extradition of criminals, ample notice is meant to be given to the other side first Ten Taiwanese who were involved in fraud-related crimes in China were extradited back to Taiwan via Kinmen County on Wednesday, four of whom are convicted fraudsters in Taiwan. The 10 people arrived via a ferry operating between Xiamen and Kinmen, also known as the “small three links.” The Kinmen County Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said that four of the 10 extradited people were convicted in Taiwan for committing fraud and contravening the Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法), and were on the wanted list. They were immediately arrested upon arrival and sent to Kinmen Prison to serve their sentences following brief questioning, the office said.
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
RSS