The China Airlines Strike

A traditional food....

The strike began at the end of May...

This was posted to Facebook...

Around two thousand China Airline (A private sector company where the state of ROC, the bourgeois state that reigns in Taiwan, is the biggest shareholder, not to be confused with the Chinese state owned Air China) employees including pilots, flight attendants, and airport logistics workers have taken to the streets refusing the company's mandate for them to sign a waiver that forfeits their 8-hour days, normal working hours, and right for union involvement in negotiating work time as accorded to by the bourgeois state.

This is a heartening addition to the recent surge of labor demonstrations against the state, where the more militant sections of these demonstrations have been making increasingly political conclusions that understands neither of the establishment parties, be the dastardly KMT or the capricious DPP, can make any progress towards ending the oppression that the working class of Taiwan endures daily.

Over at New Bloom Brian Hoie had a piece on it:

As part of a waiver which workers are required to sign as part of Article 84-1 of the Labor Standards Law, according to workers, China Airlines is seeking to increase the work time of airline staff to 220 hours per month, more than the 174 hours which the act would stipulate. It is reported that China Airlines would also seek to redefine work hours for flight attendants, counting work hours as starting from 90 minutes from departure to 30 minutes after landing, a decrease from the previous policy of counting work hours from 140 minutes before departure and 60 minutes after landing.

Despite the shortening of work hours in which cabin crew would be paid, the amount of work cabin crew have to perform would remain the same, however. Workers would also be signing away their rights to overtime and negotiation of work hours through the waiver. Article 84-1 of the Labor Standards Law is aimed at reducing excessive overtime. Part of the issue at hand, however, is that international airline flights can last for over eight hours. There is concern that this would lead to flight attendants working on regional flights being deprived of their rights as compared to those working on international flights, as well as loss of rest time. As such, workers are refusing to sign off on the waiver.

In the demonstration, the Taoyuan Flight Attendant’s Union and Taoyuan Pilot’s Union was joined by the China Airlines Maintenance and Engineering Labor Union. There are calls from unions for a possible strike to occur from June 9 to June 11, during the Dragon Boat Festival, if negotiations are unable to be resolved by then. In joining with the cabin crew union’s call for a possible strike, the China Airlines Maintenance and Engineering Labor Union has cited the deteriorating conditions of airplane maintenances staff, with loss of job security, increased turnover rates, and outsourcing of work to dispatch companies. Maintenance staff have cited the importance of their work in ensuring airplane safety in spite of poor treatment by China Airlines. Likewise, pilots have expressed concerns that they will have their amount of leave cut.

The News Lens observed last month...

The Labor Standards Act stipulates a monthly maximum of 168 working hours, but an air crew member has to work 230 duty hours for 30 consecutive days and the in-flight resting hours do not count as duty hours.

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Ma takes it on the Chin

Ants savaging a caterpillar.

Haha. For weeks many of us watching the KMT in increasing disarray have been waiting for someone to point out that Ma is still Chairman of the KMT because he can't resign. Well, it finally happened.

KMT member Chen Shu-fen (陳淑芬) said that Ma’s resignation as chairman on Dec. 3 last year and the KMT Central Standing Committee’s decision to hold a new election for the role contravene the charter, as Ma may step down only when he is no longer president or has his party membership revoked.

Could the sudden objections be arranged by Eric Chu to make room for him to run in 2016? Is Ma organizing this from behind the scenes, to enable him to remain as KMT Chair? Our operators are standing by to take your conspiracy theory now!

Fortunately KMT thinkers obviously took their training at Jesuit universities...

In response, KMT spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) yesterday said that the party charter regulated only the automatic assumption of office as party chairman to aid party unity and political focus, adding that the charter did not include the exception of the party chairman stepping down of their own initiative.

...see? When a KMTer becomes President, he automatically becomes Chair? But he can step down... O wait, if he steps down, he's not Chair. But then he must automatically become Chair, since he's not Chair... I'm getting a headache.

When this amendment was first mooted, it was widely understood as a way to enable Ma to keep his position and his face if his party lost an election. "I can't step down, the party's charter says I can't," he could then say...

Meanwhile Ma took another beating as China announced new flight paths in the Taiwan Strait without consulting Taipei. The nation donned sackcloth and ashes as legislators urged action. J Michael Cole interpreted this as a digiticus impudicus aimed directly at Ma, because Beijing now regards him as worse than useless.

And Beijing, which had already been losing patience with Ma for the “slow” pace of progress in the Strait, knows this. Unable to deliver what Beijing wants, President Ma is no longer of utility to Chinese leaders, who consequently will not hesitate to take actions that undermine his image with the Taiwanese public. In other words, the finesse is gone: Ma, like his predecessors, is being punished — humiliated, even — for failing to fall in step to Beijing’s tune. In this context, the August 25, 2014 intrusions by Chinese surveillance aircraft into Taiwan’s ADIZ, make a lot more “sense.” Then as now, Beijing’s disregard for Taiwanese sovereignty took precedent over all considerations intended to give President Ma “face.”

Taiwan complained to the ICAO about the new routes. Taiwan was invited as a guest in 2013 to the ICAO meeting (not as an observer or participant) and again in 2014 (see this discussion of the PRC and Taiwan's airspace with Bonnie Glaser). Beijing announced the new routes but hasn't filed them with ICAO, meaning that they could still be dropped. Perhaps when that shoe drops we'll see whether Beijing is testing Ma, the ICAO, or US resolve, since the US pushed China to drop similar routes years ago.

What if Beijing plays this like the ADIZ and simply doesn't file the routes, but begins using them?

Meanwhile, former Taichung mayor and KMT heavyweight Jason Hu had said he'd be taking a position at Fengjia University in Taichung. But Wednesday night he announced that he was instead becoming Vice Chairman of the Want Want media group. Want Want was the media group that tried to attain a near-monopoly position in the local media world a couple of years back Hu is a vice Chairman of the KMT but has indicated he will leave that position. solidarity.tw has the translation...

Hu said he’d already discussed arrangements for different teaching positions, and this looked like his best option. However, at the end of last year, “Mr. Tsai Eng-meng of the Want Want China Times Media Group sincerely invited me to come to his group to work.” Tsai told him that the position of the Want Want China Times is “true truth and true love of Taiwan” 真道理、真愛台灣. Tsai said he hopes to use the media’s influence to give Taiwan better days.

Hu is widely held to dislike Ma Ying-jeou and I expect that WantWant is going to savage the President. But more importantly, having a heavyweight like Hu in high office might help smooth things when WantWant makes another play for dominance in Taiwan's media market.
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Daily Links

• NYTimes: the lost KMT soldiers of remote Thailand.
• WashTimes: The Republican National Committee hopes to fence in the options of the next US republican president, make him support Taiwan
• Bird Flu is devastating our fowl farms.
• solidarity.tw translated this wonderful Apple Daily editorial on Ko Wen-je: the leader that the KMT has always wanted.
• Two men killed in execution-style killing in Taipei parking lot. It goes without saying that they were from Taichung. Drug dealing and gambling suspected.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!