Chinese Television System (CTS, 華視) employees and supporters yesterday protested the company’s plan to lay off 80 workers, which management said was necessary to manage a growing deficit.
CTS on Wednesday last week announced a plan to reduce the number of employees from 580 to 500 and offered a severance package to anyone who would volunteer to leave, adding that it would begin laying off staff if it did not get enough volunteers.
About 40 CTS staff and labor rights advocates rallied outside the company’s headquarters in Taipei, urging management to improve company finances by producing more quality television shows instead of cutting personnel.
Photo: Nien Hsiang-wan, Taipei Times
The union is not against the company offering severance packages to those who volunteer to leave, but it is against the company firing employees due to its own incompetence, union president Ma Lu-yun (馬履芸) said.
The growing deficit at CTS was not caused by its employees, but by the company’s poor policies and business strategies, he added.
“CTS general manager Leon Chuang (莊豐嘉) told employees that the company is not an assisted living facility, but let me ask him this: ‘Have you assisted us more than we assisted you?’ We have worked so hard for this company, only to be treated like this,” Ma said.
A lack of stable leadership prevented the company from following through on policies and strategies that might have produced results, union secretary Jen Chun-hsiang (仁君翔) said.
CTS has had nine general managers in the past 12 years, and most of them focused on cutting personnel and securing company property rather than developing business strategies, she added.
The union urged the company not to fire any employees and to work on improving the quality of its shows to boost revenue.
However, in an interview with reporters after the protest, Chuang said that cutting personnel is necessary considering the amount of debt that the company has.
CTS has to procure NT$300 million (US$9.8 million) in bank loans every year and due to the growing deficit, the banks now require it to pay NT$84 million in interest annually, he said.
Although the company made more than NT$100 million per month from advertisements from its broadcast of the FIFA World Cup, it still suffered a loss of several millions, he said.
To improve its revenue, CTS has been planning new business strategies and new digital content, but results would take time, he added.
It has to lay off employees, because some of them would not be able to perform the new tasks required after the company’s transformation, he said.
The company had not planned how many to let go if less than 80 decided to leave, he said, adding that the exact number would be determined after year-end performance assessments.
Only employees who performed poorly this year are to be laid off, he said.
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