Taiwan's Labor Standard's Act Changes 勞基法最新規定

The recent changes to Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act (LSA) have left many people confused. Most foreigners don’t know what Taiwan’s labor standards are at all, so let me give you some important points below:
 
Advice for Foreigners:

1. Foreign laborers, interns, and everyone in Taiwan is entitled to everything in the LSA.
2. The new LSA includes 3 days paid leave after working six months, and seven days paid leave after working a year, which will be decided by the employee.
3. The New LSA provides a day off every seven days (the same day of the week), and a flexible rest day every 7 days.
4. Everyone in working in Taiwan, as well as their dependents, should be added to National Health Insurance, Labor Insurance, and the New Pension Scheme the day they start work.
5. Your employer cannot force or coerce you to work overtime.
6. Overtime pay is double or more depending on the number of hours worked, but there is a limit to the amount of overtime hours per week.
7. If an employer fires you, they must provide workers compensation of half a month’s salary for every year that you worked at the company.
8. An employer may try to get you to voluntarily quit your job so they don’t have to pay the amount mentioned in point 6.
9. If your employer does not follow any of the above, then you can and should accuse them of breaking the law.

 
 
Recently added LSA regulations:
 
Disaster Leave:
With the recent island-wide power outage on August 15th, many people were stuck at work with nothing to do. In this situation, under the new regulations employers could have actually let employees go home without pay because it wasn’t the employer’s fault that there was a power outage.
 Here is a picture of my office during the outage:

Contracts:
Employers cannot put random clauses in the contract that contradicts other clauses or the law. As all white collar foreigners must have contracts in Taiwan, this is important to consider.
 
Overtime:
One of the biggest faults that people have with the new LSA is that overtime is not flexible enough.
The government is considering to not limiting the total overtime hours to one week, but to one month or six months, or even one year. This would be most fitting to seasonal industries that have a few busy months in the year and the rest of the year has no overtime.
Also, working on holidays doesn’t count as overtime, but after 8 hours it does. Working on rest days does count toward overtime. If people come on a rest day off then they are paid for the whole day. Some employers will want to keep employees there for the whole day. However, employers can save on utilities of they let them go home early.
 
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