A Ministry of Labor decision last week to apply “flexible working hours” rules to all professions in the agricultural, forestry, fishing and animal husbandry sectors yesterday drew criticism from labor advocates, who called for stricter review and full publication of application materials and reasoning.
“This was probably done just because of an application by grain inspection, purchasing and drying businesses, but the ministry has effectively decided to apply it to all workers in the sector,” Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-liam (孫友聯) said, adding that while there were grounds to allow flexibility in some highly seasonal industries, others that were included — such as cattle husbandry — failed to meet such criteria.
“There is a huge difference between cattle husbandry and growing vegetables or fishing,” he said, adding that separate individual reviews should have been held for each industry within the sector before applying “flexible working hours” to the sector as a whole.
“The industries that originally applied for an exception probably only have a few hundred workers in total, but this application will affect about 65,000 people,” he said.
Son accused the ministry of cutting corners and called for it to divulge who applied and publish their application materials before making any future decisions.
The ministry has gradually allowed more industries to apply “flexible working hours” standards, following the implementation of stricter overtime rules as part of the “one mandatory day off and one flexible rest day” labor reforms last year.
While “flexible working hours” do not exempt industries from the new legislation, they do provide varying degrees of flexibility over when workers’ “mandatory day off” and “flexible rest day” are granted within periods of several weeks.
While the gradual inclusion of new industries under the exception has drawn criticism from some labor rights campaigners, Son yesterday said that it was acceptable as long as the reasoning was transparent and industries would be reviewed on an individual basis.
“Flexible working hours are not actually all that useful and I seriously doubt whether there are actual cases where employers require workers to work for weeks at a stretch, because they would be required to provide too much time off afterwards,” he said.
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