Labor activists and laid-off workers staged another protest yesterday against the Council of Labor Affairs’ (CLA) NT$20 million (US$688,000) budget for suing workers over a disputed loan and vowed more intense action if the council does not withdraw the proposal.
Wearing masks of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and CLA Minister Pan Shih-wei (潘世偉), two activists outside the legislature shoveled sand over a model coffin with the word “life savings” written on it.
The protesters accused the council of trying to take away their life savings by suing them over disputed loans that, in their understanding, were given to them in place of their retirement payouts when their employers absconded 15 to 16 years ago.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“Most of these workers had worked at Lienfu Textile Co — and other companies — for decades, but they were not given proper retirement payment when their employers ran away,” Taiwan International Workers Association researcher Wu Yung-yi (吳永毅) said.
“The council intervened, saying it would pay the workers in the form of loans. It promised then that it would not ask the workers to pay them back, but would get their employers to repay the debt,” he said.
However, 15 years later, the council has filed lawsuits against the more than 400 workers who received payments.
Although the council agreed in August to suspend the lawsuits for four months after repeated protests by the workers and Pan promised to come up with to come up with a solution within a year when he took office early last month, no solution has been forthcoming and the council continues to list the lawsuit budget for the next fiscal year.
“Fifteen to 16 years ago, the workers were owed money by their employers, and now they owe money to the government. It doesn’t make any sense,” unionist Lin Tzu-wen (林子文) said.
“If the council is sincere about solving the problem, it should at least withdraw the budget,” he said.
The council has not only sued those who accepted the loan, but also their guarantors and heirs.
One of the protesters, Lee Tzu-feng (李志豐), 64, said he had nothing to do with Lienfu, but he, along with 30 other members of his family, have all been sued by the council.
“My wife was one of Lienfu’s laid-off workers. She accepted the council’s plan at the time, and asked her mother — my mother-in-law — and my father to be her guarantors,” Lee said.
“Since my wife could not afford to pay the loan, 31 people on my side of the family and on my wife’s side of the family are being sued as we all inherited the debts from my father and my mother-in-law,” he said.
Confederation of Taoyuan Trade Unions chairman Mao Chen-fei (毛振飛) urged the council to respond positively to their demand, “otherwise we’re planning to organize more intense protests.”
In addition to the annual autumn rally on Nov. 25, he said the unions also plan to mobilize workers from across the country to protest before the president on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 during the New Year celebrations.
“We may throw eggs as well as cow droppings during those protests,” he said.
Several lawmakers, including the Democratic Progressive Party’s Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇), Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國), Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) and Yang Yao (楊曜), Taiwan Solidarity Union’s Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) and Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄), have voiced their support for the workers and promised to delete the budget once it is raised in the budget review.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
RSS