Controversial amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) yesterday cleared the legislature, with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) apologizing for the inconvenience caused by her administration’s two revisions of the act within a year.
Under the amended act, overtime pay is to remain at least 1.33 times a worker’s normal hourly wage for the first two hours and at least 1.66 times from the third hour onward on weekdays.
The rates are to remain at 2.33 and 2.66 times a worker’s normal rates if they are asked to work on their weekly “flexible” day off.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
However, workers would no longer be paid overtime in blocks of four hours, but by the actual number of hours they work.
Employers are allowed to raise the monthly overtime cap from 46 to 54 hours after gaining the consent of unions or their employees during employer-staff meetings and notifying the local labor authorities, with the proviso that employees must not be allowed to work more than 138 hours in three months.
Employees would also have the option of converting their overtime into compensatory leave, but if they are unable to use the compensatory in an agreed period of time or before their contract expires, their employer would be required to convert it back into an overtime payment.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
The amended act stipulates that employees can roll unused annual leave over to the next year and that employers should convert remaining annual leave days into wages at the end of the second year.
Employers would be allowed to move an employee’s fixed weekly day off within a period of 14 days with the prerequisite that they have gained the approval of unions or employees.
Sectors wishing to adopt the measure would need to pass a review by the local authority and be designated by the Ministry of Labor as a sector that qualifies.
The aforementioned provisos also apply to an amendment that allows employers in approved sectors to shorten the rest time between shifts from 11 to eight hours.
The amendments are to take effect on March 1.
Following the bill being passed at 8:44am, Tsai issued a formal apology to the public for the social unrest caused by the second amendment to the act in a year.
While Premier William Lai (賴清德) has already apologized, Tsai said she felt she owed the public an apology as the head of her administration.
Tsai also thanked police for their hard work due to the protests the amendment provoked.
The controversy surrounding the bill, while causing some turmoil, nonetheless shows that Taiwan is a society willing to accommodate a plurality of opinions, she said.
The act would benefit employers and employees alike, and offer a substantial foundation for industrial transition, she said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators apologized to workers nationwide over their failure to block the bill.
“We would like to apologize to more than 9 million workers nationwide. Despite our greatest efforts, we were unable to stop the Labor Standards Act from being sabotaged,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) said.
“We could only do so much, but we truly hope that we can return to power in this year’s local elections and achieve what the central government could not,” KMT Legislator Chen Yi-ming said.
‘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