The Taoyuan Department of Labor has fined EVA Airways Corp NT$1 million (US$31,718) for making its flight attendants work overtime on four flights earlier this year, the airline said on Monday.
Its cabin crews were found to have worked overtime on the Tokyo-Taipei route after their flights were delayed due to bad weather, mechanical trouble and accidental factors, the airline said.
None of the crew’s extra work time exceeded 30 minutes, EVA said.
On one flight, the flight attendants were found to have overworked just four minutes, it said.
The company said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange that it would appeal to the Ministry of Labor.
The airline’s labor union has accused EVA of repeatedly violating overtime regulations, but the airline said its percentage of overtime to total crew was low, at 0.12 percent.
“That means out of 10,000 flight attendants, 12 worked overtime. We try to avoid overworking our crew, but as an airline that operates more than 70 international flights per day, sometimes it happens due to weather or accidental factors,” a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone.
EVA has proposed new flight schedules to improve flight attendants’ working hours on five routes: between Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Phnom Penh, Tokyo, Shenyang and Beijing, as well as between Kaohsiung International Airport and Tokyo.
The proposed schedules would allow flight attendants to fly a single route without worrying about wage cuts, the airline said.
EVA said it would attend a negotiation meeting to be held by the ministry tomorrow in hopes of resolving labor issues with the union.
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