Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Lexcie/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
THE TAIWAN RAILWAYS CORPORATION (TRC) has announced price hikes of 26.8%. The price hikes have already been approved by the Executive Yuan. Nevertheless, the price hikes will be the first time in thirty years that the Taiwan Railways has raised prices. They will take effect on June 23rd.
Among the reasons for the price hike are external factors, such as an earthquake that hit Hualien last year. Continued aftershocks led to a downturn in the number of tourists traveling to Hualien.
Otherwise, another reason cited by the TRC as to the need for price hikes is employee benefits. This proves ironic, considering that the TRC was until recently the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA). The TRA, as operating railways in Taiwan, was a government agency until its reorganization as a state-owned corporation on January 1st, 2024.
The corporatization of Taiwan’s rail operator had been a longstanding struggle between Taiwan Railways workers and the Taiwan Railways management. In particular, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications justified the transition on the auspices of safety. This cited the deadly 2021 rail crash that involved a Taroko express train crashing into a truck that slid into the path of a tunnel.
49 were killed and 213 injured in what was Taiwan’s deadliest rail crash in history, surpassed only by a 1948 fire. It was later found that the contractor had won the tender for the construction despite a repeated history of violations and was working despite that there should have been no work going on that day, seeing as it was a public holiday that would see increased rail traffic.
After the crash, the MOTC claimed that the corporatization of the TRA would add to the safety of railways in Taiwan. Precedents such as the corporatization of the Japan Railways were pointed to as positive examples.
Photo credit: Lexcie/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
The corporatization of the Taiwan Railways led to significant worker unrest.. A strike on International Workers’ Day in 2022, involving 12,000 of 16,000 TRA workers, including 1,300 train drivers, reveals the degree to which workers oppose the corporatization of the TRA. A subsequent strike that was originally planned for the Dragon Boat Holiday before being called off involved 1,348 of 1,400 train drivers.
Concerns from workers were that this would worsen conditions for them in that they would lose the benefits they enjoy as public servants. Workers suggested that poorer working conditions would add to rather than alleviate safety concerns.
Oftentimes, workers would point to a decline in the number of TRA workers despite increasing riders as worsening such dangers. The TRA cut workers by close to half from 22,500 to 12,500 between the 1970s and 2000s, even as the number of riders increased for the Taiwan Railways as a whole. The TRA currently has 15,900 employees as of 2023.
The corporatization of the TRA was, in this sense, framed as a de facto form of privatization. Labor contentions in Taiwanese state-owned enterprises that were formerly government agencies but were corporatized continue to this day, as also observed in the Chunghwa Post.
Even so, demonstrations by the TRA were insufficient to prevent corporatization from taking place. Corporatization occurred despite an uptick in organizing in Taiwan’s transportation industry in past years, starting with the historic China Airlines flight attendants’ strike in 2016. The strike was the first strike in Taiwan’s airline industry. Labor activity in the transportation industry shared the common characteristic that the government was a large stakeholder in companies which saw an uptick in union activity.
At the time of the TRA’s corporatization, the government claimed that the Taiwan Railways would be profitable by 2026. Yet this was clearly not the case, with the Taiwan Railways instead experiencing record losses of 13.79 billion NT in 2024. Indeed, the TRA was unprofitable and had more than 170 billion NT in debt at the time of corporatization. The government’s agenda in corporatizing was to alleviate the TRA’s debt issues. Clearly this has not taken place, however. It is to be seen what occurs next for Taiwan Railways workers, then.