Months after the enactment of a controversial workweek policy that has left businesses complaining, 21 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday proposed an amendment to lower overtime pay and relax overtime rules.
A five-day workweek policy promulgated in December last year stipulates one mandatory day off and one flexible rest day every week, and employers can ask employees to work on rest days with higher overtime pay.
The workweek law stipulates that on rest days, employees are to receive four hours of pay for work between one and four hours, and eight hours of pay for work between five and eight hours.
DPP Legislator Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) proposed a draft amendment, which was endorsed by 20 of her colleagues, that would allow employers to pay based on the actual number of hours worked on rest days.
The proposed modification would make overtime pay “attainable,” as employers have cut overtime hours due to current regulations, Ho said, although reducing working hours is what the workweek policy seeks to achieve.
The draft amendment seeks to raise the cap on maximum monthly overtime hours from 46 hours to 54 hours, provided the total overtime hours in a three-month period do not exceed 138 hours — the same as the three-month total of the current monthly cap.
The policy was inspired by the German “flexible work time account” system that allows workers to “save” or “withdraw” their work hours, she said.
Averaging out the 54 overtime hours into a 22 work-day month means 2.4 extra hours per day, so it could not exceed the maximum daily working hours of 12 hours, Ho added.
“It is to ensure room for negotiation between employers and employees. Employers would be able to increase workload to boost revenue and workers can receive overtime pay,” she said.
“I am worried that public resentment could threaten the very foundation of the country if no changes are made [to the workweek policy],” DPP Legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) said.
DPP Legislator Hsu Chih-chieh (許智傑) said the workweek law has caused a decrease in salaries as some employees can no longer work overtime, while some employers have hired part-time workers to work on weekends.
DPP Legislator Chen Lai Su-mei (陳賴素美) said there are businesses threatening to leave Taiwan due to the strict labor law.
The amendment would also require employers to pay cash compensation for unused annual leaves or allow workers to use a year’s leave in the following two years.
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