DRAFT AMENDMENTS TO LA-BOR LAWS APPROVED

11/01/2001

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In September 2001, the Executive Yuan ap-proved draft amendments to a number of labor laws. The main points are as follows:

I. Labor Standards Law (LSL)

The current LSL defines maximum normal working hours as 84 hours per two-week pe-riod. To enable the use of fragmented work-ing hours, and thus resolve enterprises' diffi-culties in planning shift rosters, the draft amendment provides that with the consent of its labor union or a labor-management meet-ing, and on condition that the rules on maxi-mum daily and weekly working hours are complied with, an employer may adjust nor-mal working hours within defined periods in accordance with the needs of the enterprise and its workforce. New provisions are intro-duced regarding eight-week and one-year flextime systems.

With respect to the level of overtime working that will be permitted, the draft amendment provides that an employer may extend work-ing hours with the consent of its labor union or a labor-management meeting. Unified limits on overtime for both sexes are introduced as follows: combined normal and extended working hours may not exceed 12 hours on any one day, and extended working hours may not exceed 46 hours per month.

The proposed amendment also relaxes restric-tions on women's night work, to allow female workers to work at night if the employer has obtained the consent of its labor union or a labor-management meeting, and on condition that safety and hygiene facilities and means of transport are provided.

II. Labour Union Law

The draft amendment provides that civil ser-vants (not including skilled and unskilled an-cillary staff employed by administrative agen-cies), teachers (not including non-teaching staff or skilled and unskilled ancillary staff employed by educational establishments), armed forces personnel, and employees of defense-related enterprises, may not be or-ganized into labor unions.

With regard to the thresholds for establishing unions, the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) originally proposed that a labor union could be organized in any establishment with ten or more employees. However, economics- and finance-related agencies took the view that this condition was too permissive, and would lead to excessive numbers of unions. The Executive Yuan agreed to maintain the current threshold of 30 employees.

The present provision on compulsory union membership is retained.

The current rules are relaxed to exempt indus-try-wide and occupation-wide unions in a single region or industry from the limit of one union per enterprise.

III. Collective Agreement Law

Deliberately boycotting conciliation procedures, or refusing to provide necessary information to a reasonable extent, are both be deemed unrea-sonable refusal to conciliate. The side against which the refusal is directed may undertake me-diation, arbitration or industrial action with re-spect to the matters under conciliation, in ac-cordance with the Labor Disputes Settlement Law. On adjudication, fines up to a certain limits may be imposed for acts of refusal to conciliate.
IV. Labor Disputes Settlement Law

Ancillary staff of administrative agencies, and non-teaching and ancillary staff of educational establishments, may organize unions, but may not take strike action in support of disputes.

In the three areas of electric power supply, mains water supply, and air traffic control, neither side in an industrial dispute may take industrial action.

In the six areas of telecommunications, mass transport, public health, petroleum refining, hospitals, and gaseous fuels, the competent authorities may if necessary, order both sides in an industrial dispute to observe a 30-day cooling-off period, during which no industrial action may be taken.

V. Employment Insurance Law

All persons in Taiwan aged 15 to 60 in em-ployment have to pay mandatory Employment Insurance contributions in addition to Labor In-surance and National Health Insurance. If they become unemployed they will be entitled to claim unemployment benefits, employment training supplements and early reemployment incentives. For the initial period after the scheme is introduced, the contribution rate is provision-ally set at 1% of monthly salary as defined for insurance purposes. However, this will be hived off from the current Labor Insurance contribu-tions, and therefore will not increase the burden on either employees or employers.

In addition to the above draft amendments ap-proved by the Executive Yuan Council, the CLA has also at its own meetings passed a draft amendment to the Rules for Convening La-bor-Management Meetings. Under the proposed amendment, the number of labor and manage-ment representatives who should attend a la-bor-management meeting is relaxed to two to 15 persons from each side instead of three to nine as at present, and foreign workers may participate.
In future, labor and management at an enterprise may delegate equal numbers of representatives to labor-management meetings according to the size of the company, but where the enterprise has more than 100 employees the number of dele-gates from each side must not be less than five.

To prevent either labor or management repre-sentatives boycotting votes on resolutions by manipulating the number of delegates, the pro-posed amendment also greatly raises the voting thresholds for adopting resolutions, requiring three-quarters of the delegates present to vote in favor instead of two-thirds as under the current rules.

Under the current rules, labor-management meetings are "in principle" to be held monthly, and additional extraordinary meetings may be called as necessary. To make the legislative framework more explicit, the draft amendment provides that a labor-management meeting must be held at least once every three months.