Overtime Rates and Holiday Restrictions - Non Teaching Work

I am trying to make some sense of two issues at the moment and any help or directions anyone can offer would be appreciated.

  1. Overtime pay.

We work a normal 40 hour week, and often have to do overtime, both during the week and at weekends. Originally, overtime during the week was counted as 1:1, you work 1 hour, you get one hour off, and overtime at the weekend was 1.5:1, to compensate you for having to work at weekends. The situation is now changing and we have been told that overtime at weekends will now be at 1:1 for the first 8 hours of additional work with an increase after that.

The problem is that you rarely do more than 8 hours of overtime on a Saturday, so we are now losing out. Are there any restrictions or guidelines in the law about overtime? How does this relate to the 84 hours in two weeks rule that the government sets out? Oh, they also say that MOnday to Friday, overtime only strarts after 7, even though we finish at 5.30, so they can get 1.5 hours free every day.

  1. Holiday Restrictions.

The Taiwan standard is 7 days per year, we add to this time off in lieu for additional hours worked. However we have now been told that no matter the type of holiday, we are not allowed to take more than one day off at a time. So even if I have a weeks worth of time off in lieu available, I can only take this one day at a a time. The same applies to annual holiday. In essence this means that even a long weekend is now not allowed as we may not take a Friday and a monday off together.

Does anyone know if there are any regulations on holiday that allow the employer to restrict how many days you can take at a time?

Hope this is clear, if anyone can find relevant sections in the law that apply or send me a link to them I would be most grateful.

blightyboy

I don’t know about the law but the company I work for allows me to take 5 days together.

So they’re essentially preventing anyone from taking a vacation? That’s a strange one indeed. Must do absolute WONDERS for employee morale! Your boss must be a management guru!

[quote=“blightyboy”]I am trying to make some sense of two issues at the moment and any help or directions anyone can offer would be appreciated.

  1. Overtime pay.

  2. Holiday Restrictions. [/quote]

no idea what the law actually says, but i can let you know what it’s like at my work:

  1. everyone works overtime during the week, and more than half the company works on the weekends. none of this is directly compensated for.

  2. we don’t have any restrictions

technically in our handbook it says we’re supposed to be paid for overtime but…yeah i guess not haha.

The Labor Standards Act has the following on overtime:

[quote]Article 24
An employer shall pay a worker overtime wages on the following basis:

  1. Where the overtime work does not exceed two hours, the worker shall be paid, in addition to the regular hourly wage, at least an additional one-third of the regular hourly rate.
  2. Where the overtime work is over two hours, but does not exceed four hours, the worker shall be paid, in addition to the regular hourly wage, at least an additional two-thirds of the regular hourly rate.
  3. Where the overtime work is requested in accordance with Paragraph 3 to Article 32, the worker shall be paid two times the regular hourly rate.[/quote]

Article 32’s paragraph 3:

Regarding annual leave, the provision is here:

[quote]Article 38
Where a worker continues to work for one and the same employer or business entity for a certain period of time he (or she) shall be granted special leave on an annual basis on the following basis:

  1. Seven days for the services of more than one year but less than three years.
  2. Ten days for the service of more than three years but less than five years.
  3. Fourteen days for the service of more than five years but less than ten years.
  4. One additional day for each year of service over ten years up to a maximum of thirty days.[/quote]

Regarding holiday time, the calculation is quite complex because there are a wide range of holidays but only a certain number are granted. The extensive analysis of a Taiwan-lawyer colleague came to the conclusion that although there are 19 listed holidays, about 8 days of that gets knocked out by the fact that nearly all employees are no longer on the 6-day working week.

Note that there are separate Regulations for Leave-Taking of Workers that cover wedding leave (8 days with pay), funeral leave (8 days for death of parent, foster-parent, step-parent, spouse; 6 days for death of grandparent, child, spouse’s parent/foster-parent or step-parent; 3 days for sibling, spouse’s grandparent – all with pay), medical leave, leave for “matters which a worker must personally deal with”, and so on.