The New Power Party (NPP) and workers’ unions yesterday called on the government to establish a legal basis for workers to take days off due to high heat or offer better wages for working in hot environments.
Taipei alone issued 12 heat alerts in the past month, NPP Legislator Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) said, adding that the number of patients seeking medical help due to heat-related injuries has also increased, highlighting the urgent need for regulations to protect workers.
Airport ground crew, construction workers, postal workers, caddies, delivery drivers, security firm employees and other workers, who have to endure long hours of work in extreme heat, have the right to refuse to work, and additional wages or subsidies need to be offered when they work under possibly harmful conditions, he said.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Railways Administration
Only three of the companies that failed a heat prevention inspection last year were fined, with the majority of them given a grace period to make improvements, he said.
Chiu said the government needs to ensure that such grace periods have a strict deadline and increase inspections on companies with a violation record, he said.
Chunghwa Express Workers’ Union president Kuo Li-chih (郭勵志) said that employees work outdoors during the day and constantly move from high heat to air-conditioned environments, which exposes them to a higher risk of heat injury.
The union urges the company to adjust its work hours and offer subsidies for employees working outside in a high-heat environment, he said.
Taiwan Railway Industries Workers’ Union secretary-general Chu Chih-yu (朱智宇) said the Ministry of Labor’s inspections do not consider hazard from hot indoor environments.
The Taiwan Railway Administration’s engineers have to endure a high-heat environment when welding or doing intense manual labor, while they have no other tool than fans to mitigate the heat, he said.
These inhumane working conditions have caused nearly 300 people to quit their jobs in the past three years, Chu said.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
RSS