An ongoing labor shortage in hotels and restaurants is due to low wages rather than imbalanced supply and demand, the Ministry of Labor said yesterday.
The ministry made the remarks after Grand Hyatt Taipei (台北君悅大飯店) general manager Will Chen (陳慶隆) on Wednesday told reporters that the five-star facility is looking at a rapid recovery in business next year.
However, the lack of staff is slowing the pace, he said.
Photo courtesy of Caesar Park Hotels and Resorts
Formosa International Hotels Group (晶華酒店集團) chairman Steve Pan (潘思亮) earlier said its flagship property, the Regent Taipei (台北晶華酒店), had to turn down reservations for thousands of banquet tables due to understaffing.
About 58 hotels have about 380 vacant positions, but only 37.4 percent meet wage expectations, the ministry said, adding that there is ample room for improvement if companies want to resolve the situation.
The ministry said it had launched rounds of matching campaigns, and concluded that wage expectation gaps account for the understaffing issues in the hospitality sector.
Hotels have pressed the government to ease regulations regarding hiring migrant workers, as it is currently limited to the manufacturing, construction, agriculture and fishing sectors, as well as caretaker positions.
The service sector comprises 60 percent of employment in Taiwan, and there are many potential workers available locally to work at hotels and restaurants, the ministry said.
Hospitality operators should lower their qualification requirements or raise compensation to attract applicants to vacancies, it said.
Dependence on low-paid migrant workers is not healthy for the industry or society, it added.
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
Taiwanese artificial intelligence (AI) server makers are expected to make major investments in Texas in May after US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office and amid his rising tariff threats, Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (TEEMA, 台灣電子電機公會) chairman Richard Lee (李詩欽) said yesterday. The association led a delegation of seven AI server manufacturers to Washington, as well as the US states of California, Texas and New Mexico, to discuss land and tax issues, as Taiwanese firms speed up their production plans in the US with many of them seeing Texas as their top option for investment, Lee said. The
RSS