The Taiwan Railway Labor Union on Wednesday said it might hold a protest and go on strike next month if the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) presents its proposal to transform itself into a state-run corporation to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications without first reaching an agreement with the union.
After a derailment of a Taroko Express train in Hualien County on April 2 last year killed 49 people, Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材), who took office on April 20, vowed to transform the agency into a state-run corporation within three years.
Wang has since last month met with union representatives, trying to convince them that the transformation would solve the railway operator’s problems.
Photo: CNA
However, union members opposed the plan, saying that it was not the reform they had expected.
The agency has over the past decades accumulated more than NT$400 billion (US$14.376 million) of debt, and the ministry has proposed that earnings after tax would be used to pay off the debt, the union said in an online statement.
“How can TRA employees get better pay and benefits under such circumstances? Once the agency becomes a corporation, employees would also have to give up their qualifications as government workers. An employee in a firm that makes no profit could be laid off at any time,” it said.
Union chairman Chen Shih-chieh (陳世杰) said the union is not against reforming the agency, but questioned whether the planned railway corporation would mean a true reform and increase operational safety.
“We urge the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to resolve the debt and other issues first, and reach an agreement with the union before sending statutes governing the establishment of a railway corporation to the Legislative Yuan. Otherwise, we cannot accept the proposal,” he said.
The union said it had originally planned to organize a protest on Feb. 23, to which 3,748 members had signed up.
However, the rally would be postponed, as COVID-19 regulations limit crowd sizes, it said.
The ministry said that the state-run corporation would keep the TRA’s employees
Chunghwa Post Co, Taiwan International Ports Corp and Taoyuan International Airport Corp used to be government agencies, and none of them have laid off significant numbers of workers since the transformations, the ministry said.
TRA employees would not be paid less in the state-run railway corporation and might get 4.4 months of salary as performance-based bonuses, even if the company does not post profits, it said.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS