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Taiwan seeks balance between strikes and social harmony

Taiwan seeks balance between strikes and social harmony

Ed: Taiwan seeks balance between strikes & social harmony

2016 has so far turned out to be an awful year for Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. First of all, the long-promised Mass Rapid Transit line linking Taiwan’s main gateway with its capital still failed to materialize, suffering its umpteenth delay with a date for an opening day still nowhere on the horizon.
In early June, Taiwan’s weather struck the airport. Even though rain is nothing new to the country, with afternoon thundershowers an almost daily occurrence during summer and several typhoons passing by per year, the airport still managed to get flooded, with food courts turning into lakes and access roads blocked. Lightning also played its part by knocking out a radar system.
The final humiliation came in late June, when China Airlines, Taiwan’s major carrier, suffered an unprecedented strike by one union, the Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union.
Anyone familiar with international travel knows that strikes are a common risk of flying around the world. In some countries, strikes are more frequent than in others. Until now, Taiwan has mostly been spared the ordeal, with passengers wishing to leave the country for business or holiday never encountering more vexing problems than delays caused by bad weather.
All that changed on June 24. The Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union, which claims more than 2,000 members, held a vote among its rank and file, with more than 99 percent giving their approval for industrial action. Just days later, the leadership deemed the rime ripe for action and called on all its members to stop working.
The industrial action was accompanied by protests outside CAL’s former headquarters in Taipei City, with public opinion seemingly overwhelmingly in favor of the flight attendants.
“The most beautiful protest in the world,” one newspaper headlined. While flight attendants enjoy a reputation for glamour and are ostensibly well paid, they face long and irregular hours at the beck and call of sometimes arrogant and demanding customers. Sleep is irregular, especially during long intercontinental flights, and safety concerns always have to be borne in mind.
The strike being the first of its kind, the protesters won the hearts and minds of most of the public.
Realizing it couldn’t win a public relations battle, the new management at China Airlines had no choice but to compensate for the mistakes of its predecessor and give in on virtually all of the strikers’ demands.
As expected, or as feared, the union’s victory reached within 22 hours of launching the strike led to bitter criticism from other unions. If one union succeeded in obtaining concessions for all of its demands, others needed to obtain the same, and they did.
The main CAL employee union, representing about 10,000 workers, presented a list of eight demands, which again were completely accepted by the airline.
The company’s new chairman, who took office the day of the strike, Ho Nuan-hsuan, won the reputation of a man who solved problems. While his willingness to meet with protesters and to chair negotiations which ended in the resolution of the strike or strike threats, other opinions of him were less charitable.
Ho was accused of paving the way for a domino effect, for an unending series of demands and threats of strike action, which might necessarily please protesters in the short run, but might lead to financial problems and more chaos in the long run.
Strikes have always been rare in Taiwan, partly because of its authoritarian heritage, partly because of the willingness of many citizens to put economic growth above everything else, sometimes also above workers’ rights or environmental protection.
That mood seems to have been changing, mainly due to dissatisfaction with the previous administration of President Ma Ying-jeou, when parts of the population, more specifically student, became more outspoken about protesting against injustice.
The advent of a new government on May 20 also inspired many thanks to its emphasis on hope, change, reform and transitional justice. The Ministry of Labor has been pushing plans for rearranging working hours and days off for workers, and while those plans have not always been welcome with all sides, they are an expression of the wish to change.
The danger of the CAL strike is of course that it triggers a domino effect to include sectors and companies
Already, unions at state-run Taiwan Power Corporation have started voicing new demands, which if they are accompanied by a strike, could result in far more disruption to the public at large than a one-day strike by flight attendants ever could.
The government and the management of state corporations need to lay the groundwork for more harmonious relations by listening to their employees and improving working conditions, but they also need to act wisely and responsibly for the greater good.
Taiwan has to improve the lot of its workers, but it also needs to avoid the fate of many European countries, where public transportation faces widespread disruption due to strikes. Air traffic controllers in France have gained an unenviable reputation for launching strikes at busy holiday times, while over the recent past, Belgium has been hit by almost monthly train drivers strikes. The actions have called the quality and reliability of public transportation into question.
Just like protests or occupations are sometimes necessary to make governments see the error of their ways, strikes can work to redress injustices at work.
However, a strike should remain a weapon of last resort, a weapon used to break a stalemate in favor of justice, not a regular way of solving differences of opinion and certainly not as a political weapon to be used by the opposition against the government of the day.
When strikers support a just cause, they will win the hearts and minds of the public, but if they abuse their newly won rights, the public will rapidly grow tired and not be afraid to voice a backlash against excessive abuse of the right to strike.