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Gov’t Incompetence Leaves the Public Hostage to Strikes

icon2019/06/26
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 Gov’t Incompetence Leaves the Public Hostage to Strikes

 

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

June 18, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

The management and labor at EVA Air declared that at 2 pm on June 20 their talks broke down; at 4 pm flight attendants started to strike, forcing EVA to cancel 79 flights on June 21st, only being able to maintain about 50% of air transportation capacity, with 15,000 passengers’ travel schedules being affected. Following more flight attendants joining the strike, the number of affected passengers will gradually increase.

In the last three years, Taiwan's airline industry has witnessed three strikes: the first was China Airlines flight attendants strike in June 2016, impacting 122 flights and over 30,000 passengers. The second was China Airlines pilots’ strike last March, which canceled 163 flights, impacting 30,000 passengers. Add the EVA flight attendants’ strike this time, the frequency of strikes and the scale of impact in Taiwan’s airline industry in recent years probably has topped the world. This has caused an enormous negative impact on Taiwan’s society; besides innocent passengers and the tourism industry being seriously impacted, our national image and the airline industry have both been negatively impacted; this is no simple matter and could not be brushed away.

In fact, the major reason that made Taiwan in recent years the country with the most frequent airline strikes in the world is the incompetence of the government. First, after the first China Airlines flight attendant strike, Ho Nuan-hsuan, China Airlines Chairman, who represented the government shares, in order to seek an early settlement did not adopt the recommendation of the management team to “refer the case to arbitration”, completely accepting the flight attendants’ appeals. Although it temporarily solved the problem, it however, let labor taste success, believing that as long as they held passengers’ rights and interests as hostage, the management, under the pressure of vehement backlash of the public, would bow their heads and make concessions, thus planting the seeds of today’s frequent strikes.

In advanced countries, laws and regulations stipulate an early warning period for airline industry strikes, such as 7 days in the UK, 17 days in Canada, 10 days in Japan, and 14 days in Ireland. The US has extremely stringent norms for airline industry strikes; lawful strikes are nearly impossible. However, in Taiwan, the union may, before labor-management negotiations have reached a settlement, vote with a simple majority to secure the right to a lawful strike, and may at any time use a multitude of passengers’ rights and interests as a weapon for confrontation, virtually holding passengers as "hostage", demanding "ransom" from management, which lacks legitimacy.

In actuality, our country’s “Labor-Management Dispute Resolution Act” stipulates that related labor of the teaching profession and the Defense Ministry may not strike, while labor and management of waterworks, power, heating, hospitals, financial paying and receiving systems, and the telecommunications industry must by contract stipulate indispensible services clause before they can declare a strike; the reason is to avoid paying enormous social costs. Relative to the abovementioned industries, the airline industry absolutely involves enormous public interests; however, it is excluded from these industries, allowing labor of this industry to hold the passengers’ rights and interests as hostage, becoming bargaining chips on the negotiation table, which is entirely unreasonable.

Right now, some legislators are fed up with the situation, proposing three versions to revise the pertinent legislation, stipulating that the airline industry must have an "early warning period" before launching a strike. We will be happy to see the fruition of the amendment and also hope it will be adopted as soon as possible in order to prevent government incompetence from continuing to undermine the rights and interests of the general public.

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