Hundreds of China Airlines (CAL) flight attendants and maintenance engineers yesterday staged a protest in Taipei against a change in their working conditions.
Flight attendants said they refused to sign the written agreement mandated by Article 84-1 of the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), because CAL was using it as a reason not to grant the rights of flight attendants working on regional flights the same benefits as their peers on international flights.
The company said the act allows them to increase the working hours of flight attendants to 220 hours per month, even though the Act states that the working hours should be set at 174 hours per month, they said.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Despite the protest, the new policy is to take effect today as planned, the company said.
Yesterday’s protest began at 4am when three CAL flight attendants arrived in front of the airline’s branch office on Nanjing E Road. They remained in place for 12 hours.
Members of the CAL’s flight attendants union, as well as the China Airlines Maintenance and Engineering Labor Union (CAMELU), also staged a rally in front of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday afternoon, saying that none of Minister of Transportation and Communications Hochen Tan’s (賀陳旦) stated aims addresses the working conditions of the airline’s basic-level employees, despite the fact that the ministry is one of the airline’s main shareholders.
Union members said the airline’s new labor policy does not take into account commuting times.
They said the company now calculates the work hours of the flight attendants from 90 minutes before flight departure to 30 minutes after flights land, down from the previous policy of counting the work hours from 140 minutes before flights depart to 60 minutes after flights land.
Working hours appear to have been shortened by 80 minutes, but the work they have to do remains unchanged, they said, including carrying out security inspections and verifying sales and payments of duty-free items.
“By adopting the new policy, the company would legitimize not paying the flight attendants for working overtime,” they said.
“The rest time that would have been enjoyed by the flight attendants would be reduced too, which enables the company to further abuse the flight attendants when they arrange the rotation,” the union said in a statement.
The airline held a news conference before the afternoon protest to rebut the union’s claims.
CAL president Chang Yu-hern (張有恆) said the company has held five information sessions since February about the new policies.
Chang said the new polices would not affect the rest periods enjoyed by flight attendants and signing the document as per the requirements of Article 84-1 of the Act is mandated by law.
“The act states that an employee should work eight hours per day, and employees cannot work more than 12 hours if they work overtime. However, the job of a flight attendant cannot meet the standard because flights to the US or Europe take more than 10 hours. Article 84-1 functions as a protection clause for flight attendants, which requires both the labor and the employer to sign an agreement and give it to the labor rights authority for reference,” he said.
Chang said the company would not overwork the flight attendants and would even offer work hours shorter than the requirements stated in the Civil Aviation Act (民用航空法) and the Labor Standards Act.
The firm would not change the accommodation available to flight attendants, whether they work on long-distance or regional flights, he said.
The company plans to continue seeking to resolve the dispute through a just third party, the airline said in a statement.
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