Typhoon leave

My colleague had a spat with the designated HR person and I’m curious if there are others in the same situation and how it was resolved.
My colleague lives in New Taipei City but the company is in Taipei. She’s got a couple of kids and the schools were cancelled in New Taipei City so she stayed home with them. The HR person wanted her to use vacation time for today.
Based on what I saw on the news, I don’t think this is correct. Thoughts?

I think that they can stay home but they will ask her to use vacation time unless she can prove she was working or given permission to work at home ?

What a mess working in Taiwan is.

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The company can’t force you to work from home on a Typhoon day.

Your friend is in the right. She gets the day off, albeit unpaid. The company is not allowed to reduce any bonus or attendance incentives for the absence since it was government approved. They cant force her to use any of her leave time either. It is simply an unpaid day off.

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So why not use vacation time to get a paid day off now? It sucks but that’s how it is in Taiwan.

I guess that’s how it is. It seems unfair for her to have to use vacation time. Of course, the HR person uses our group chat to make her point quoting articles. Very chicken!@#$

Some people may prefer to use their vacation time for an actual vacation. Others may get paid out for unused leave. In any case, for typhoon days, an employer can’t force you to use personal (vacation) leave.

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Getting paid out now is better than getting paid out later.
Why wait until the end of the year to get the pay (pay out) for that paid leave if you can get paid holiday now out of said paid leave?

The only reason is if you want to take a prolonged holiday and need that long paid leave. But hardly anyone in Taiwan does that.

accumulating vacation days is a pain for many taiwan workerbees. it slowly accumulates and many people like using it to take longer vacations (like a week off to travel). in this case, you would rather just take an unpaid day off so you can still accumulate the 5 days you need, rather than blow a day and then set back your vacation count. this happens more than you might think btw.

lots of other people though would probably just use the day to get paid. depends on everyone’s situation. bottom line though is that it’s good to have this option.

edit: acutally i know of another situation. i know of a lot of people that never seem to have any days, they constantly use em up or sometimes even in the negative (when possible). so they will rather just take unpaid because well if they don’t even have any days, then they don’t have any, but if they do have a day, they will want to use it for something else. remember, it’s really buhaoyisi to take a day off when you have no days off. better to just save that day when you actually do want a day off.

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I once found a “Typhoon Day Regulations” type of document, in Chinese. I can’t find it now, but iirc this is how it works:

  • If work is cancelled in the area where you work, or in the area where you live, or in an area that you need to cross to get from where you live to where you work, you’re excused from work and cannot be penalized.
  • “Cannot be penalized” means you can’t be fired or lose your attendance bonus on the basis of the typhoon day, but as for salary, only those with a fixed monthly salary are unaffected; if you have an hourly rate, you lose. (This does not match the rules for holiday pay, but a typhoon day is not a holiday within the meaning of the Labor Standards Act.)

If classes were canceled, but work was not canceled, that obviously creates a difficult situation.

If your friend doesn’t get a typhoon day for herself, but her kids do, she should still be able to use a day of personal leave (事假, Regulations of Leave-Taking of Workers Art. 7) instead of a vacation day. That means she loses her salary for the day. A standard personal leave day counts against the attendance bonus.

However, if it’s a day of family care leave (家庭照顧假, Act of Gender Equality in Employment Art. 20), it can’t be refused, and it doesn’t count against the bonus (Art. 21) even though it counts against the salary. I haven’t seen this type of request, but I assume “other major events” (其他重大事故) covers typhoons.

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That is the way that I understood it.