You Yourself Have to Eradicate the Seed of Evil for Strikes You Planted

 You Yourself Have to Eradicate the Seed of Evil for Strikes You Planted

 China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

June 27, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

EVA Air’s flight attendants announced that they would strike on June 20 following the collapse of labor-management negotiations, entering the seventh day today. This is a triple loss situation for labor, management and the general public. Examining this event, one has to go back to the China Airlines flight attendants strike three years ago when President Tsai Ing-wen immediately expressed her strong support, planting this seed of evil. Although the EVA strike will inevitably have an end, politicians must do some soul-searching and shoulder responsibility, never caring only about politics, and not the innocent masses again!

When labor and management face disputes, with both parties negotiating, even entering a period of strike, the most important thing that the government should do is to maintain the role of neutral mediator and referee; such stupidity as the Labor Minister going to visit the strikers, expressing a stance of support should best be avoided. More importantly for safeguarding public interests, viewed from this perspective, the Tsai government is completely derelict of duty.

As far as this EVA strike is concerned, the date of the strike was the day of the collapse of the negotiations, leaving thousands or even tens of thousands of passengers being affected without any room to deal with the emergency. This act of the union was indeed unwise, because it greatly reduced support for strikes on the part of society; however, to say that the government was left helpless was hard to explain. In fact, when China Airlines launched a strike three years ago, various circles already discussed that for certain industries involving enormous public interests and people’s rights, strikes should have an early warning period in order to allow the people and relevant units to have room to deal with the emergency, reducing the harm to society. However, after three years, even though we experienced a strike by China Airlines pilots earlier this year, impacting our countrymen’s itinerary of tours abroad during the Chinese New Year’s holidays, the Tsai government rather prioritized those bills that concerned the political interests and elections of the Green camp, being not a bit interested in systematizing the revision of law relative to an early warning period for strikes.

Lamentably, we haven’t seen even now any program introduced by the Labor Ministry concerning an early warning period for strikes; conversely it only stated that it "would consider the matter comprehensively", trying to evade the matter The Tsai government should ponder, if aviation industry strikes have such an enormous impact, then some day, waterworks, power, fuel, telecommunications and other monopolistic industries that involve more extensively and impact more enormously people's livelihood, wouldn’t the impact of all those striking be even greater? To stipulate an early warning period for certain industries is absolutely necessary.

As for the government, it should assume the role of a good mediator and arbitrator, bringing the strike to an early close, and not supporting either side. More importantly: enact pertinent laws and system, erecting an early warning period, not allowing similar incidents to repeat once again. The Tsai government was derelict of duty at first, now it should ponder on mending the fences.

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