A Ministry of Labor study published yesterday showed that 37 percent of Taiwanese worked overtime last year, down 4.6 percentage points compared with the previous year.
This year’s edition of the annual government survey on the living standards and working conditions of Taiwanese workers was conducted in June and July last year with 4,085 valid responses.
The ministry said in a news release that although the percentage of Taiwanese who worked overtime dropped, the average number of extra hours they worked increased to 14.7 hours per month.
Photo: Taipei Times
However, 25.5 percent of workers were contacted for work-related issues after work hours, up 1 point from a year earlier.
Government personnel and military service members are most likely to work overtime at 53.3 percent, followed by highly skilled service workers at 51 percent per month, it said.
Manufacturing, real estate, and agriculture and fisheries workers put in the most amount of overtime at 20.4 hours per month, 18.8 hours per month and 18.3 hours per month respectively, the ministry said.
The share of employees who reported being compensated with bonuses or vacation time for extra work was 85 percent, slightly up by 0.7 points from the previous year.
Real estate was the sector least likely to compensate workers for overtime work, with 33.7 percent of its workers reporting not receiving compensation, the ministry said.
Content creation, finance and insurance, technical support and the Ministry of Education failed to pay more than 20 percent of their employees for overtime work, the Ministry of Labor said.
The study found that 74.6 percent of respondents reported being satisfied with their working conditions, while dissatisfied workers were most likely to be unhappy about issues related to a lack of advancement opportunities, pay and inadequate training.
Most workers support keeping the five-day workweek, with 46.5 percent of respondents favoring flexible days off and 41.8 percent favoring designating Saturday and Sunday for rest, it said.
Additional reporting by Lee Chin-hui
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