The number of furloughed workers has reached a new high for this year, as the lodging, food and beverage sector continues to be affected by a domestic COVID-19 outbreak, the Ministry of Labor said yesterday.
The number of workers placed on unpaid leave between Friday last week and Thursday rose to 22,179, up 1,340 from in the previous seven-day period, ministry data showed.
The number of companies with furlough programs in place also rose by 115 to 3,027, the data showed.
Department of Labor Standards and Equal Employment Deputy Director Huang Wei-chen (黃維琛) said the increases were largely driven by the lodging, food and beverage sector, which accounted for about 70 percent of the increases, as COVID-19 fears discouraged people from traveling and dining in restaurants.
The number of workers in the sector placed on unpaid leave rose to 6,547 from 5,589, while the number of companies with furlough programs in place also rose to 432 from 387, the data showed.
A hotel in southern Taiwan in the most recent seven-day period reported more than 100 newly furloughed workers, and a restaurant chain reported that one of its outlets in northern Taiwan placed more than 100 workers on unpaid leave, Huang said.
However, the situation is expected to improve after a subsidy program for domestic travel starts in the middle of this month, Huang added.
The COVID-19 pandemic also took a toll on the retail and wholesale industry, which reported that the number of furloughed workers increase to 1,661 from 1,513, the data showed.
Huang said that one glass retailer in the most recent seven-day period placed 40 additional employees on unpaid leave, after furloughing 100 workers in the previous period.
In the transportation and warehousing industry, a small tour bus company reported that it had implemented a new furlough program, Huang said, but did not disclose the number of employees affected.
As a result, the number of transportation and warehousing workers on unpaid leave increased to 1,313 from 1,263, the ministry said.
As border controls remained in place, the number of furloughed workers in the support service industry, which is dominated by travel agencies, also increased to 9,420 from 9,365, it added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching