didn’t realized it was public holiday – i’m here in office working and should join the labor union…
Good for them!
Labour unions are why we usually have superior holidays in the west and better working conditions.
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If the KMT had done this, you can be sure there would have been people in the tens of thousands.
I kinda thought as they economy lagged, this place would start to focus on quality of life and become an East Asian hub for creativity or something. Just kinda given up on this place now
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Only 3000 according to this article, but it’s a colorful crowd.
At least the KMT and NPP can agree there’s a problem here, even though the KMT probably doesn’t like the NPP’s idea of how to solve it.
Now if the TT wants to engage its readers more, I think it should start holding “caption this” contests. For example, imagine what everyone in the next article’s photo is saying or thinking…
Wow, these sound really reasonable:
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is pushing for amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), but drew fire from labor groups after proposing cutting seven national holidays from the calendar.
Subsequent disagreements emerged over what holidays should be cut and which ones kept.
The NPP said it last week held a vote on the issue among party members and party supporters.
A total of 1,364 ballots were cast, the party said, adding that holidays that secured the greatest number of votes included the Lunar New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, the Formosa Incident Memorial Day (Dec. 10), Lifting of Martial Law Memorial Day (July 15), Aborigine Name Rectification Memorial Day (Aug. 1) and Nationwide Hakka Day (lunar calendar Jan. 20).
National holidays are safeguarded by the Constitution, Huang said, adding that they have social and cultural value, as well as historical significance and political importance.
“However, the protection of basic labor rights is an even greater concern,” Huang said.
I don’t really get all the backlash over the holidays. We haven’t had a national holiday on Oct 25th (KMT occupation day) and Oct 31st (Chiang Kai-shek’s birthday) since 2001. Now we are arguing whether or not these holidays should be canceled? WE HAVEN’T HAD THEM FOR 15 YEARS!
The rest of the 7 supposedly lost holidays:
1/02 (day after new year, never used to be a real holiday anyway)
3/29 (youth day, haven’t had it for years)
9/28 (teacher’s day, fake Confucius birthday, haven’t had it for years either, I didn’t get a day off for this when I was in elementary school, I know this because I had to stand at detention for saying “woah, Confucius is old” when the teacher said it’s confucius’s 200 something birthday)
10/25 (KMT occupation day, haven’t had it for 15 years)
10/31 (CKS’ birthday, haven’t had it for 15 years)
11/12 (SYS’ birthday, I didn’t get this day off when I was a kid either)
12/25 (CKS made up this day after he converted and wanted to have Christmas off)
These holidays is NOT the issue. The real issue is whether or not we get both Sunday and Saturday as mandatory leave day, or is one just flexible leave day.
Actually Taiwanese were kind of conditioned and bullied into losing those holidays (some groups still had them).
Then for a very brief period they were restored and some groups figured out they need to protest now or never.
The Tsai administration made up some rubbish about a fixed day and a flexible day and nobody is buying any of that crap either.
Having no holiday right through the Summer is a disgrace and the winter period is also almost holiday free!
The company I work for have had them all along until they were cancelled this year. Not the same now that they have been “brought back” as there used to be few other companies off and going anywhere was a pleasant crowd free experience.
The fixed day and flexible day thing also has been in place for ages. They are just going to make sure that everyone gets a maximum of 40 work hours per week.
The law should be designed to protect those who have the least bargaining power, and that’s real laborers. Those people who have more specialized skills and more bargaining power can get extra vacation time through competition or negotiations.
I don’t really go along with that, I think we should all get more public holidays just like in Japan. Everybody get the same holidays and more of them. This year Japan added another public holiday, mountain day.
And why not? Public workers get lots of holidays already and nobody complains about that! My kids could do with more holidays too.
If the govt tells employers to give more holidays they will give them but then the employers will just put pressure on people not to take them. The same kind of thing happens in America already.
Interestingly if you see whose doing most of the protesting about the holidays being removed it’s the blue collar groups!
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Cos Japan is our neighbor and lots of businesses and public admin here are modeled on Japan
In fact Japan now has 16 public holidays a year,
at least one every month.
If people have some time off they can go out and spend money and do stuff. It’s not neccessarily a drag on the economy, in fact it can boost the local economy.
But more important than that …people can enjoy their lives a bit more.
Amazing to see how shit UK and Netherlands public holiday entitlement is.
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Have you counted how many days Taiwan has without the 7 not a holiday for most people for the past 15 years days?
01/01 New years
02/07 Chinese new years eve
February 8-12 Chinese new years
02/28 228
04/04 women/children/tomb sweeping day
05/01labor day
06/09 mid-summer day
09/15 mid-autumn day
10/10 ROC day
That’s already 13 days. With the full 7 extra days that’d be 20. Japan can have one per month because they did away with their traditional calender. Good luck trying that in Taiwan. If being like Japan puts this whole thing to rest, I’m all for it.
Can tell who the Scrooge McDuck Trump supporter is here.
How about the situation were Taiwanese workers are defenseless against their bosses ridiculous overtime requests and work some of the longest hours in the world. If bosses were in any way interested in ensuring workers had rest and quality of life, wouldnt need the government to step in.
More holiday, is more time to travel and more time to consume.
UK has rubbish public holiday provisions but we also get a month of vacation and our bosses are reasonable when we need personal time or some flexibility.
How can anyone not see this as outrageous. The government of one of the most overworked countries in the world have had 7 days national holiday cut to keep the country competitive (what nobody ever does). And the capitalist cut throats come out and see ‘ITS OK, WE DIDNT USE TO HAVE THEM’.
Great, why not just keep decreasing pay and working conditions until nobody wants to work here at all, then even China wont want this place. Thinking this is the DPP plan at least
Couldn’t that be said about Japan and Korea as well?
I’m one of those people that felt the Bern. My political view is as far away from Trump as possible. That’s why my concern is for those who are powerless, and not people who sit in an office at work while browsing online complaining losing 7 holidays. I don’t care that the new labor act is going to suck a bit for people like me, or people who make much more than me.
The working people without much bargaining power are the ones that need to be protected by law. It’s like the minimum wage.
If there’s no way to enforce having 2 days off a week, regardless of whether one is fixed to a weekday, then there’s no way to enforce people wouldn’t be forced to work on the 7 supposed holidays anyway.
So what if working conditions are also bad in those places. At least the pay is decent.
The two day weekend is an issue
As is the seven day national holiday.
The government is purposely trying to conflate them to obscure the situation
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They are the same issue. If we are not going to have two day weekends, then we can have the 7 extra public holidays.
Most people didn’t have those holidays for the past 15 years because we’ve been having an incomplete two day weekend system for the past 15 years. It was incomplete because it didn’t really apply to workers without much bargaining power. So to those people, they didn’t have 2 day weekends and didn’t have that 7 extra public holidays for the past 15 years.