Newsletter
CLA CHANGES VIEW ON CON-DITIONS FOR EFFECTIVENESS OF WORK RULES
On 28 November 2002, the CLA issued an in-terpretation that a business entity's work rules should be publicly displayed; if their content contravenes mandatory requirements or prohibi-tions imposed by law or collective bargaining agreements applicable to the business entity concerned, they should be void.
According to Article 70 of the Labor Standards Law ("LSL") and Article 37 of the LSL En-forcement Rules, when the number of persons employed by an employer reaches 30, the em-ployer should immediately draw up work rules, and submit them to the local government au-thority for approval. The Ministry of the Interi-ors (MOI) previously stated that a business en-tity's work rules should be submitted to the government authority for approval, and be pub-licly displayed. If the above statutory require-ments are not complied with, such work rules should be void. However, Article 71 of the LSL provides merely that work rules should be void if they contravene mandatory requirements or prohibitions imposed by law or collective agreements applicable to the business entity concerned. Thus the above MOI interpretation was to some degree inconsistent with Article 71 of the LSL, and in practice this led to doubt as to whether the approval of the government author-ity was indeed a necessary condition for work rules to take effect, or whether they would be void only if they contravened mandatory re-quirements or prohibitions of law or the provi-sions of applicable collective bargaining agree-ments.
Numerous past court decisions have confirmed that work rules' validity is not conditional upon their having been reported to the government authority for approval. The CLA's new inter-pretation corrects the contradiction between the MOI interpretation and court decisions. There-fore in the future the work rules of a business entity will take effect on being publicly dis-played, and remain valid as long as they do not contravene statutory requirements or prohibi-tions, or collective agreements applicable to the entity. However, if a business entity fails to present its work rules to the government author-ity for approval in accordance with Article 70 of the LSL, it will still be liable to a fine of NT$6,000 to NT$60,000.