Unions yesterday accused the Ministry of Education of inaction over instating rules to protect the labor rights of students working as teaching assistants at universities.
During a protest in front of the ministry’s building in Taipei, the unions called for the workers to be treated as contract employees so they can be protected by the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法). Members of the Taiwan Higher Education Union, National Taiwan University Union and National Chengchi University (NCCU) Student Labor Rights Association accused Department of Higher Education Director Nicole Lee (李彥儀) of flip-flopping over the issue.
The ministry in September issued a resolution promising that teaching assistants would be made contract employees following four public hearings, the groups said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
However, Lee during a meeting in October contradicted the resolution, saying that it is within each university’s jurisdiction to decide whether to sign employment contracts with teaching assistants, unions said.
The ministry has not issued instructions to universities to make them comply with the resolution, they said.
Taiwan Higher Education Union member Su Tzu-hsuan (蘇子軒) said that teaching assistants are either contract assistants or student assistants, who take class attendance, prepare teaching materials, mark test papers and calculate grades.
Citing statistics the union compiled in July, Su said that students assistants at 78 out of 137 universities did not have the same rights as contract assistants.
This is a form of exploitation, because student assistants work, but are excluded from the act, which means their seniority is not taken into account when the Ministry of Labor calculates their monthly pensions, and their employers can bypass a rule that requires 6 percent of their monthly salaries to be allocated as pension, he said.
NCCU student Lu Kuan-hui (呂冠輝) said his university deducted the monthly labor insurance premiums it is required to pay the government for contract assistants from their salaries, putting their wages below that of student assistants, and people were forced to accept student assistant positions because of this.
NTU Union secretary-general Tseng Chih-hua (曾稚驊) said that the ministry’s reluctance to set out rules defining the positions has created loopholes which universities can use to exploit workers by assigning full-time assistants to tasks meant for student assistants.
He called on the ministry to order universities to make student assistants contract employees by issuing official papers.
Ministry official Wu Chih-wei (吳志偉) said that the change is a possibility the ministry is looking into, rather than a finalized policy.
The ministry is to subsidize premiums universities need to pay for student assistants starting next year, but the ministry has not made any plans to do away with student assistant in the short term, he said.
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