Taipei, May 1 (CNA) Thousands of Taiwanese workers urged the government Saturday to ban dispatch hiring and include protection of labor rights in the negotiations on a proposed cross-Taiwan Strait trade pact.
In a Lobor Day rally in front of the Executive Yuan, the workers also called for the government to stop interfering with the unions and to guarantee pensions for the country's entire workforce.
The rally will be only the first wave of a continued effort until working conditions are improved and related laws are revised and amended, said Hsieh Chuang-chih, secretary-general of the Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions.
Crowds chanted slogans of "anti-poverty" and "down with Wang Juh-suan, " (minister of the Council of Labor Affairs) " during the three-hour protest, voicing their discontent over what they see as government incompetence that has caused shrinking job opportunities and salaries.
"It is the management, rather than the workers, who have enjoyed the vast majority of the benefits of globalization and trade liberalization, " according to Hsieh.
Private businesses and government agencies have also increased their dispatch hiring over the past few years, making it more difficult for local workers to land permanent jobs.
Premier Wu Den-yih, who was in Taichung and did not address the crowds personally, told reporters that the labor rights problem in Taiwan is a long-standing issue that first occurred during the previous administration, in which temporary jobs and numbers of foreign workers increased dramatically.
Leaders of the rally denounced the Council of Labor Affairs' (CLA's) response to their appeals issued on the eve of the protest, as "irrelevant." The CLA stated that a flexible mechanism of hiring has been a global trend since the 1990s and that termination of such hiring would jeopardize a large number of jobs. According to the CLA, there were approximately 516,000 temporary workers in Taiwan as of May 2009.
Approximately 1.3 million workers in Taiwan, including 600,000 temporary workers and 700,000 workers with less than 35 working hours per week -- more than 10 percent of Taiwan's workforce -- are working on a temporary basis with no hope of a pension or hope of landing a permanent job, Hsieh said.
According to statistics, the total workforce was 10.63 million as of March, while unemployment reached 5.67 percent, down from the historic high of 6.13 percent last August.
"We oppose the planned legalization of temporary hiring in the Labor Standards Act. We also express our regret and anger over the government's favoring of management and large corporations over the workers, " said Lo Tsai-feng, a representative of Young Fast Optoelectronics Trade Union.
In addition to unions from private businesses, their counterparts from government agencies such as Taipei City's Department of Environmental Protection and Parking Management and Development Office, also participated in the rally because most of their jobs have also been outsourced. (By Chris Wang) ENDITEM/J