Former employees of Radio Corp of America (RCA) burst into tears as a court yesterday ordered that the now-defunct electronics company and its owners pay NT$564.45 million (US$18.11 million) in damages to 445 former workers and their families.
With pink banners around their foreheads saying “RCA workers never give up,” about 60 members of the RCA Self-Help Association cheered their victory after the Taipei District Court handed down the ruling on the decade-long legal battle in what has been described as the worst industrial disaster in the nation’s history.
“During my time at RCA, we were often exposed to organic solvents. No one knew whether the substances were hazardous to our health,” said Huang Chun-tiao (黃春窕), 56, who was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer after working at RCA for 18 years.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
According to the verdict, the defendants asserted that the plaintiff had failed to prove that the health issues resulted from exposure to environmental factors, but judges opined that the causal relationship could be determined with “a reasonable degree of medical certainty” to be the toxicity of the organic solvents.
RCA operated in Taiwan from 1970 to 1992, with plants in then-Taoyuan County, Hsinchu County, and Yilan County, employing tens of thousands of people in the production of color TVs and other electronics products using up to 31 kinds of organic solvent, including trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethene, exposure to which increases the risk of cancer, the verdict said.
In 1998, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) found that the site of the former RCA plant in Taoyuan was contaminated with chlorinated organic solvents and other toxic chemicals used in its production after the company had illegally dug wells to discharge the toxic waste, which contaminated tap water used by its workers and nearby residents.
The 7.2 hectare plant has been designated by the EPA as a site of “permanent contamination.”
During the period between 1992 when RCA shut down its plants in Taiwan and 2004 when 519 members of the association filed the civil lawsuit, more than 1,300 of RCA’s former employees have been diagnosed with various types of cancer, with 221 of them dying, the verdict said.
A year after the takeover of RCA by General Electric (GE) in 1986, the firm was sold to Thomson Consumer Electronics, the US subsidiary of France-based Thomson Multimedia, which is now called Technicolor SA.
The RCA Self-Help Association had sought damages of NT$2.7 billion from RCA, GE and Thomson, but the court absolved GE of any blame, a decision over which Joseph Lin (林永頌), the lead lawyer for the association, expressed regret.
Lin thanked the judges for determining that the effects of the pollutants caused the diseases, a rare decision in a Taiwanese case.
The defendants have the right to appeal the Taipei District Court’s verdict.
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS