Following the suicide of a civil servant in the Ministry of Labor’s Workforce Development Agency (WDA) in November last year, the Executive Yuan launched an online workplace bullying reporting platform last month.
The system handles any complaints in a confidential manner, and the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration must follow up on how the ongoing cases are progressing.
The measure addresses the issue in the short term, but from a legal standpoint, certain problems remain.
How is bullying defined? Looking at Taiwan’s laws — excluding sexual harassment, sexual bullying or other aspects related to sex — the legal clauses involving bullying are essentially concentrated on bullying within school environments, and between teachers and students; it does not really touch upon the workplace.
Examples of that could be found in Article 15 of the Teachers’ Act (教師法), Article 31 of the Act Governing the Appointment of Educators (教育人員任用條例), Article 12 of the Statute for Preschool Educators (教保服務人員條例), Article 23 of the Early Childhood Education and Care Act (幼兒教育及照顧法) — which talks about the use of corporal punishment or the bullying of children or students — and Article 8 of the Educational Fundamental Act (教育基本法), which has sections on safeguarding students’ rights against mental or corporal punishment and bullying, and the formulation of an anti-bullying mechanism.
Regarding the workplace environment, be it in the Civil Servant Service Act (公務員服務法), which deals with public servants in government departments, or the Occupational Safety and Health Act (職業安全衛生法), which is responsible for what happens in the private sector, there are no specific clauses that deal with the issue of bullying.
Although Ministry of Labor directives on the prevention of unlawful infringements during the execution of official duties do touch upon the issue of bullying, these are at best only administrative rules and do not really apply to civil servants.
CLARITY NEEDED
Compare that with the situation in Japan, where workplace bullying has been explicitly tackled in labor laws since 2009. Japan’s labor laws define workplace bullying as words or actions in the workplace that are excessive and disproportionate to the scope of the business, and detrimental to the environment of the workers.
There has already been a considerable amount of research done in Taiwan on Japan’s legal system that policymakers can refer to.
The government needs to be clearer about what actually constitutes workplace bullying, and the legal distinction between bullying, actions that are necessary and proportionate speech, and actions in business. It should not simply put on a show of trying to tackle workplace bullying.
Until it does, the online bullying reporting platform is doomed to be unfit for its purpose, and would end up as just another waste of time and administrative resources.
Opposition parties in the Legislative Yuan last month proposed draft legislation for the prevention of workplace bullying, which still awaits review. If the government is truly committed to dealing with workplace bullying, it should propose its own legislative amendments or laws in the next few months that would serve as a solid legal basis to fight the problem.
Lo Cheng-chung is a professor and director of Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s Institute of Financial and Economic Law.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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