Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) and Fan Yun (范雲) yesterday urged the Ministry of Labor to review gender equality laws to protect workers, following a sexual harassment scandal at a chocolate company.
At a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, the lawmakers called for amending the Gender Equality in Employment Act (性別工作平等法).
The amendment highlights a case in which former Fu Wan Chocolate president Hsu Feng-chia (許峰嘉) in 2015 was sentenced to six months in prison, which was commuted to a fine.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The issue was brought to light again after an Internet user last month posted about the case on the Dcard forum, resulting in other people announcing they would boycott Fu Wan Chocolate.
Hung said yesterday that the existing act does not stipulate the process for investigating an employer as the perpetrator in a case, adding that the act leads to that employer also being the judge, jury and executioner, which discourages victims from filing complaints “through the system.”
The amendment would address the issue by allowing victims to appeal to local authorities when an employer or company manager is the harasser, Hung said.
If the charges are substantiated, the accused would face a fine of up to NT$1 million, Hung added.
The amendment is waiting to be reviewed by the Legislative Yuan’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee, he said.
Fan said that Fu Wan Chocolate is the first instance of a company’s products being boycotted due to a sexual harassment case.
The public has different expectations for companies, Fan added.
The Fu Wan Chocolate incident, along with the 2018 Google employee walkouts due to the Internet company’s handling of sexual harassment cases, demonstrates that sexual harassment is an important issue, National Taipei University law professor Kuo Ling-hwei (郭玲惠) told reporters.
Later yesterday, the ministry responded by saying that the act has its current wording because it also applies to military personnel, civil servants and educators.
Panels of experts and local labor office officials would be convened to discuss what changes should be made, the ministry added.
This story has been amended since it was first published.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test