EQUALITY FOR ALL:The minister of labor said that the ministry has been working on a new amendment that would institute a 40-hour work week with no exceptions
Taipei Times
Date: May 25, 2016
By: Huang Pang-ping and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
The Ministry of Labor will not continue pursuing its proposal to cancel seven national
Minister of Labor Kuo Fan-yu gestures during an interview in Taipei yesterday. Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
holidays and will not contest the legislature’s decision to return proposed amendments to a bill by submitting revisions to the amendments, Minister of Labor Kuo Fan-yu (郭芳煜) said yesterday.
The legislature last month voted to uphold the Health and Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee’s decision to return the ministry’s planned holiday cuts included in a proposed amendment to the Enforcement Rules of the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法施行細則) that sought to reduce the annual number of holidays for employees by seven days.
As a returned proposal must be revised or withdrawn by the proposing agency within two months, the ministry’s abstention from submitting revisions to the amendment would result in its expiry on June 21 and the restoration of the national holidays that were previously canceled, Kuo said.
The amendment was conceived to supplement the amended Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) to reduce work hours for private-sector employees to 40 hours per week, but the bill allowed exceptions to the rule for some employers and proposed to cut national holidays that are only observed by the private sector, he said. [FULL STORY]
