The Taiwan Higher Education Union is to send a list of new member teachers from National Taiwan Normal University’s (NTNU) Mandarin Training Center (MTC) to the school so that the collective bargaining process can begin, a union leader said on Monday.
Under the Collective Agreement Act (團體協約法), a union can initiate negotiations if more than half of the employees in the bargaining unit — in this case, teachers at MTC — are union members, union secretary-general Chang Chih-lun (張志綸) said.
More than two-thirds of MTC teachers had joined the union as of Friday, Chang said, and the union would submit the list of those teachers to NTNU within days to get the process going.
Photo: CNA
Mandarin-language teachers at the MTC on Friday protested their working conditions on the NTNU campus, complaining that they were not afforded basic rights under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), such as sick leave, marital leave and annual leave.
That is problematic, because while most NTNU lecturers and staff are governed by the Teachers’ Act (教師法), teachers at the MTC are covered by the Labor Standards Act, a status that was confirmed by a Ministry of Labor ruling in October 2024, Chang said.
Despite that ruling, NTNU has yet to adjust its labor conditions to comply with the law, Chang said.
Tu Kai (杜愷), a Mandarin teacher at the MTC, said at the protest that teachers at the center are hired on only three-month contracts, raising concerns that their jobs are temporary.
If the teachers want to take time off, they have to pay their substitute’s hourly wage out of their own pocket, Tu said.
To address those and other issues, the protesters released a draft collective agreement that requires the school to comply with Labor Standards Act provisions on stable employment, transparent systems for hiring, pay, evaluations and course assignments, and better salaries and treatment.
NTNU said in a statement that it would verify the union’s legal bargaining status based on the Collective Agreement Act and had also initiated a team to review the union’s draft group agreement.
The team would consider the practical needs of MTC teachers as well as seek to protect student rights, ensure educational stability, and evaluate administrative feasibility and the university’s finances, NTNU said.
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