Several labor groups on Monday called for a minimum monthly wage increase of at least 5 percent from next year.
Ahead of today’s meeting of the Basic Wage Deliberation Committee, the labor groups held a news conference in front of the Ministry of Labor in Taipei to push for the raise.
Starting from January, the minimum monthly wage was raised by 5 percent from NT$22,000 to NT$23,100 (US$698 to US$733), while the minimum hourly pay was raised 7.14 percent from NT$140 to NT$150.
The committee reviews the minimum wage every year, after which the Executive Yuan considers its recommendations before finalizing the increase. Before a final decision is made, labor and business groups have a chance to make their own recommendations.
The demand came after seven major business groups — including the Chinese National Federation of Industries, the General Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of China, and the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce — late last month met with Minister of Labor Hsu Ming-chun (許銘春) to ask that no minimum wage increase be made next year.
Holding banners and flags, labor group representatives shouted: “Raise the minimum wage to help workers surmount wage stagnation” and “Raise the minimum wage to give fair allocation of workers’ efforts; demand a hike of no less than 5 percent.”
The business groups said that even if the committee recommends a wage increase, it should not top 3 percent.
At the news conference, Solidarity Labor Union secretary-general Huang Yu-te (黃育德) said that the government should have a legal mechanism for increasing the minimum wage by enacting a minimum wage law.
Through such a law, the government would be able to consider important economic data, such as the consumer price index, when it deliberates minimum wage hikes, Huang said.
The ministry said that it in late May drafted a minimum wage law and has already submitted it to the Executive Yuan for review.
Yilan Confederation of Trade Unions president Lu Hsueh-min (呂學民) said that about 2.5 million workers are paid the minimum wage, including many people working for food companies in Yilan County.
After the 13km Hsuehshan Tunnel connecting Taipei and Yilan opened in 2006, an influx of travelers has pushed up consumer prices in the county, but wages have stayed flat, making workers’ lives more difficult, he said.
Chinese National Federation of Industries director Ho Yu (何語) said that if the minimum wage is raised by 3 to 5 percent, companies could expect to see their combined costs increase by NT$16.1 billion to NT$25 billion.
The US-China trade dispute has affected global economic fundamentals, and along with China’s ban on independent travelers and the government’s pension reforms, the local economy has been harmed, Ho said.
The business groups are calling for a freeze on the minimum wage to help enterprises withstand pressure from rising costs, he added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching