Efforts to clear the Executive Yuan’s draft amendment to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) through committee reviews were delayed yesterday after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Arthur Chen (陳宜民) and Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) filibustered a meeting for more than two-and-a-half hours.
The Economics Committee and Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee yesterday held a joint review of the proposed amendment.
Lawmakers across party lines filed a slew of motions ahead of the meeting, which were put to votes.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The first motion, tendered by the KMT caucus, proposed that lawmakers be allowed to speak about revisions to the draft amendment that they have proposed for as long as they want and that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀), who chaired the meeting, must allow each lawmaker that has signed up to speak to speak at least twice.
Of the 24 lawmakers that attended the meeting, 10 voted for the motion, nine voted against it and five were not in the room, eliciting cheering and applause from KMT lawmakers.
The results appeared to startle the DPP caucus, which has a much larger representation on the two committees, with Lin and legislative officials taking a long time to count the votes.
DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) proposed that the motion be voted on a second time, drawing strong protests from KMT lawmakers, who said that Ker’s proposal violated legislative rules.
When Lin later left the podium for a short break, all KMT lawmakers flocked to the speaker’s podium and occupied it.
Ker denied that his proposal was in breach of legislative rules, saying that it is customary for motions to be reconsidered during plenary sessions.
However, seeing as he had lent his support to the proposal to let all lawmakers speak more than once earlier in the meeting, Ker said he would concede and retract his new proposal.
Subsequent motions that called for the Cabinet’s draft amendment to be returned to a plenary session for deliberation and for the DPP and the KMT to each hold an additional hearing on the amendment were voted down by a narrow margin.
The lawmakers continued to discuss motions to revise Article 24 of the act, which governs rules on workers’ overtime pay for work on off days.
DPP Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) submitted a motion, but was absent from the meeting.
The method she proposed for calculating overtime largely corresponds to the one under the current “one fixed day off, and one flexible rest day” policy, but addressed the calculation of overtime pay for the first four hours of work, whereas existing rules count overtime in blocks of four hours, up to a maximum of 12 hours.
Chiang filed a motion to retain the current rule that workers be paid 2.5 times their hourly salaries, while Chen filed a motion to pay workers twice their salaries if they are asked to work on their off days.
The Cabinet’s draft amendment stipulates that workers would be paid their regular hourly wage for the actual number of hours they work on off days.
Chen, who was the first lawmaker to speak about Article 24, spoke for about 30 minutes, reading pages of what he said was online criticism of the amendment before addressing his proposal.
Chiang, who spoke after Chen, was tipped off by KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) that as soon as he finished speaking, the DPP caucus would file a motion to end discussions and put all motions related to the article to a vote.
After receiving the information, Chiang continued to speak about the amendment to stall the proceedings.
He went on for more than two hours without leaving the podium.
It was already past 5:30pm, when the session was scheduled to end, when Lin Ching-yi asked the other lawmakers whether they agreed to continue the meeting until midnight.
She broke up the meeting after a majority of lawmakers objected to the proposal.
The draft amendment is scheduled to undergo another review early next month.
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at