The majority of respondents in a survey about Taiwan’s national holidays support reinstating seven former annual holidays, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) think tank today told a news conference.
The KMT commissioned All Dimensions Public Research, Inc. to carry out the survey from Thursday until Saturday last week, collecting 1,068 effective samples with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Photo: Wang I-sung, Taipei Times
About 56.7 percent supported reinstating seven more annual holidays, which were removed in 2016, according to the poll.
About 66.3 percent were in favor of designating Labor Day as a public holiday, while 64.3 percent supported reinstating Teachers’ Day as a holiday, 64.1 percent for Retrocession Day on Oct. 25 which commemorates the end of Japanese occupation of Taiwan, and 65.4 percent for Constitution Day on Dec. 25.
The KMT has made restoring public holidays a priority bill in the upcoming legislative session of the Legislative Yuan.
The Legislative Yuan must closely examine the working hours and rest days of Taiwanese workers in this upcoming session, as Taiwan has become a “sweatshop island,” KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said.
Taiwanese workers are known to work hard, with fewer annual rest days than those in Asian neighbors, with 11 national holidays a year compared to 16 in Japan and South Korea, 17 in Hong Kong and 13 in China, he said.
Taiwan’s work hours are also the longest in Asia according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with the exception of Singapore, though wages between the two cannot compare, he added.
The seven national holidays were removed in 2016 as amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) that year required all workers to have two days off per week, one fixed and one flexible, meaning those seven holidays were cut to enable the change, the think tank said.
However, data from last year shows that Taiwanese work an average of 2,020 hours per year, the fifth-highest of 39 major countries surveyed, and amendments in recent years have not alleviated Taiwan’s chronic overwork problem, it added.
The National Federation of Teachers Unions and cross-party legislators last week also called for the government to designate Labor Day on May 1 and Teachers’ Day on Sept. 28 as official national holidays to align the number of rest days between the public and private sectors.
Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) previously said that he hopes to create a nationwide standard for public holidays and find a solution that minimizes social disruption, calling for an open and rational discussion on the matter.
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