Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: MiNe/WikiCommons/CC BY 2.0
THE TAIWAN RAILWAYS UNION went on a 100-hour hunger strike that began at Taipei Main Station over the last weekend. This was in protest of a ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court, which found workers as having acted in bad faith through a labor protest that took the form of 337 union members taking leave over the Lunar New Year from January 27 to January 30, 2017, and only informing the company of their planned leave on January 23rd. The ruling also decided that the Taiwan Railways Administration had not engaged in unfair labor practices and was not in the wrong in marking workers who took leave as absent without authorization.
The ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court overturned a previous ruling in favor of the union by the Taipei High Administrative Court. The Taipei High Administrative Court found that the Taiwan Railways management had engaged in unfair labor practices by arranging work schedules for the Lunar New Year without their consent. By contrast, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the Taiwan Railways management had the right to do this, and did not contravene the Labor Standards Act.
However, the larger issue at hand returns to the restrictions on strike actions that this legal precedent sets. The Lunar New Year leave taken by Taiwan Railways Union members amounted to a de facto strike, but was framed as workers using their right to take leave over the Lunar New Year, one of the busiest times each year for the Taiwan Railways due to increased travel over the holiday. Specifically, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the Taiwan Railways Union did not give the company enough time to adequately prepare for the impact of the strike. The Supreme Administrative Court framed the actions of the union as violating the principle of good faith, even if it acknowledged the right of the union to settle disputes using means other than established mechanisms, and concluded that union members had violated their contract.
Taiwan has seen an increased wave of union activity, especially in the transportation industry, since the historic strike by China Airlines flight attendants in 2016. The strike was the first strike in the history of Taiwan’s airline industry and was organized by the Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union.
Afterward, one saw union activity in other airlines, such as EVA Air, among pilots, and among ground staff. One also saw union activity in the bus industry, and among Taiwan Railways workers, who were mostly protesting the reorganization of the Taiwan Railways Administration into the Taiwan Railways Corporation. The corporatization of the Taiwan Railways Administration would change the body from a section of government to a state-run corporation, which the Ministry of Transportation and Communications claimed would improve safety in the wake of a deadly 2021 train derailment, but which workers warned would cut benefits in a way detrimental to rider safety.
In the course of strikes in the transportation industry, unions frequently adopted a strategy of appealing to the central government to intervene. The government is usually a major stakeholder in companies in the transportation industry, whether that be the airline industry or the bus industry.
But, in turn, one observes transportation industry companies increasingly adopting union-busting tactics, especially in the airline industry. Union executives were dismissed under various pretexts, alleged to be engaged in illicit activities, such as acting in pornographic videos, or alleged to be Communists by way of red-baiting.
As transportation strikes lead to large disruptions to society, management increasingly began to call for advance notice of strikes and suggested that unions were violating the law by not informing them in advance about strikes. Transportation industry company managements have increasingly been successful in convincing the public that advance notice should be required before strikes.
One observes the culmination of this trend with the Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling. As such, even if the ruling cannot be appealed, the Taiwan Railways Union has stated that it will call for a retrial and seek to mobilize other unions across Taiwan in order to demonstrate. Certainly, the ruling may have a large impact on the ability of unions to carry out independent courses of action that are not through establishment mechanisms, or by way of terms set by company managements.