Pension reform proposals should be adjusted to plow savings into better pensions for ordinary workers, Social Democratic Party (SDP) members and labor advocates said yesterday at a forum criticizing President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) stances on a range of social and economic issues.
“Calling for pension reform savings to be reinvested into government employees’ pension funds is absurd because we should really be focusing on helping the truly needy,” SDP policy convener Chen Shang-chih (陳尚志) said at a forum on government accomplishments as the one year anniversary of Tsai’s inauguration approaches.
He criticized pension reform plans for failing to include better benefits for impoverished elderly people, calling for a “pension floor” to be established to protect National Labor Insurance pensions below NT$17,200 (US$568) from reform cuts.
Photo: Su Fang-he, Taipei Times
In addition, payments to the long-term unemployed from the National Pension should be increased to NT$7,000 per month, he said.
Government employees are to earn substantially higher pensions than those offered by the Labor Insurance system. Most pension reform proposals guarantee a “pension floor” of between NT$22,000 and NT$32,000 for civil servants and teachers.
The cost of guaranteeing the Labor Insurance pension floor and increasing National Pension payments could be covered by the NT$117.3 billion per year that the Cabinet’s reform plan would cut from government employees’ pensions, he said.
In addition, NT$50 billion could be saved by hastening cancellation of industry tax breaks under the expired Act for Upgrading Industries (促進產業升級條例), which could also be used, Chen said.
“The government has been pushing forward a misleading discussion by treating a basic social guarantee of labor insurance pensions like private insurance, where people only get a return on an investment,” Taipei City Confederation of Trade Unions executive director Chen Shu-lun (陳淑綸) said.
She blasted government plans to cut labor pension further, even though premiums and retirement ages are already gradually increasing under reforms enacted in 2009.
“We have very little to start with, but the government is seeking to make further cuts by playing with how our average salary base is calculated,” she said.
She criticized the government for failing to factor in inflation as it seeks to increase the number of years used to calculate the average and also for lacking “core values” in determining its labor policies, and instead “seeking to please everyone.”
She called for Tsai to reject industry calls for further revisions to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association research associate Lu Hsin-chieh (呂欣潔) echoed Chen’s remarks about the government’s lack of values.
“Originally, we hoped that Tsai wanted to be a friend to homosexuals, but we have since discovered that she intends to keep her distance,” Lu said, criticizing government efforts to find “societal consensus” on homosexual marriage.
“The government needs to realize that getting everyone to agree to marriage equality is impossible because it concerns values,” she said.
Other advocates criticized government stances on Aboriginal rights and the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program.
A Labor Insurance pension floor is unfeasible because of the expense, and the government is only able to guarantee that workers would “get what they put in,” said Department of Labor Insurance director Shih Fa-chi (石發基) of the Ministry of Labor.
A pension floor of between NT$17,000 and NT$18,000 would increase the government’s monthly expenditures by NT$90 million to NT$100 million, he said.
Additional reporting by Peng Wan-hsing
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS