The Taipei City Department of Labor fined a local company NT$100,000 for firing a female employee for marrying a coworker, establishing the nation’s first case against discrimination of relationships in the workplace.
The female employee, who developed a relationship with an office coworker, married this year. Upon learning of the marriage, the company said policy forbade office relationships and fired the bride, according to the department.
Department of Labor Director Chen Yeh-shin (陳業鑫) said the department began investigating the case after the woman filed a complaint. The company claimed that it fired her because of poor work performance, but failed to provide evidence to back up its claims.
Taipei City’s Gender Employment Equality Committee discussed the case last month and decided that the company had violated Article 11 of the Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別工作平等法), which stipulates that employers should not use marriage as a reason to fire people.
The department said the female employee was working at an investment and research firm. She said the firm had asked her to quit after she told her superintendent about the marriage. However, the firm said her husband could stay at the company.
This was the first employer to be fined for banning office relationships and firing an employee because he or she got married. The department declined to reveal the name of the firm or the identity of the worker.
Chen said firms can transfer workers to other departments if an office relationship develops and affects their performance.
If office relationships affect the performance of employees in the workplace, employers must first inform the employees and give them time to improve their performance before firing them, Chen said.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
RSS