Poor implementation has dampened the effect of amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) mandating a 40-hour work week, union activists said yesterday, calling for stronger restrictions on overtime.
A household survey conducted by the Ministry of Labor showed that since the legal work week was cut by two hours in January, average weekly work hours fell to 43.15 hours for the January-to-April period compared with 43.53 hours in December last year, Taiwan Higher Education Union department director Lin Po-yi (林柏儀) said, attributing the muted effect to lax overtime regulations.
Compared with the same period last year, average weekly working hours between January and last month fell by roughly 0.8 hours, with the new mandate affecting about 40 percent of workers, according to ministry statistics.
“What is relevant is the effect immediately before and after the new rules came into effect — and that has not been substantial,” Lin said, adding that a gradual reduction trend in work hours before the new rules came into effect made direct month-on-month comparisons with last year misleading.
Ministry plans to cut seven national holidays following implementation of the amendments have been controversial, with the Legislative Yuan last month passing a resolution requiring the ministry to reformulate plans after activists said that loopholes in the new rules would lead to an overall sacrifice of worker interests.
Lin said that while ministry proposals to mandate an additional weekly day off on top of the existing mandatory holidays would discourage employers from spreading shifts over six days, it still would not address union concerns that the overall cuts in overtime rates would prevent the new rules from leading to a substantial reduction in working hours.
“If the ministry changes rules to mandate one official day off and one vacation day each, the amount of overtime pay people would be eligible for would actually drop,” Lin said. “You cannot use a new weekly vacation day as an excuse to cut national holidays.”
As act rules mandate that workers be paid for every day of the month — including days off — overtime pay is calculated based on a 30-day work month, leading to overtime pay that is only marginally higher than workers’ regular salaries, he said.
Low labor inspection coverage, coupled with weak unions and loopholes preventing act restrictions from being applied to certain jobs would also make it difficult to force substantial reductions of national working hours, he said.
Department of Labor Standards and Equal Employment Deputy Director Huang Wei-chen (黃維琛) said that seasonal differences in the industrial work cycle mean that it is still too early to know how much of an effect the mandate has had, adding that an average of three hours of weekly overtime was within an “acceptable range.”
While the union is correct that overall overtime pay would be cut under the formula, if the seven national holiday were eliminated, the ministry would mandate an additional weekly “vacation day,” he said, adding that the ministry is considering changes to the overtime pay formula.
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