Speaking for young workers
Through the unremitting efforts of the older generation of labor movement activists, ROC labor laws gradually became more comprehensive during the 1990s. Progress has been made in combating the mistreatment of workers when plants close and the cavalier firing of long-serving personnel, but some employers are still abusing workers' rights, whether intentionally or not.
YLU 95 receives two to three complaints a day on average. Among common grievances are those about employers "not paying for National Health Insurance," "not paying salaries or overtime," "offering compensation below the minimum wage," or "requiring workers to pay large 'breach of contract' penalties when leaving." Depending on the severity of the circumstances, YLU 95 can take a variety of steps, such as providing relevant legal information, assisting the aggrieved workers in sending legal attest letters to their employers, applying for mediation from the CLA, or accompanying the workers during mediation or negotiations with management.
If they discover that these victims have been mistreated in a manner that is prevalent within the industry, they will go a step further and help the workers hold press conferences, thus bringing greater exposure to these issues and potentially quickening the pace of restitution. For instance, several times they exposed franchisees of the coffee and cake shop chain 85°C for breaking labor law, and they put strong pressure on 85°C's head office to clean up its act.
Over a period of more than two years, YLU 95 has handled 116 separate grievance claims, fighting to get more than NT$2 million in wages and insurance payments paid out by employers. It's harder to put a number on those that have benefitted indirectly. (If city or county labor bureaus take action against a company for violating labor law, in addition to the workers filing complaints, others of the same company's workers who were victims are also compensated.) The impact of the group's work is considerable.
Behind all the accolades YLU 95 has garnered, its young staffers have put forth enormous effort-an amount that's hard for outsiders to imagine. First of all, most of the members of the organization come from university departments or graduate institutes of labor affairs, sociology or economics, so they've already got a lot of coursework to attend to. Then on top of that they've got to find time to become familiar with labor law, meet to consider actions to take on individual cases, participate in one labor-management negotiation after another, and even accompany workers to court. Individual cases can take anywhere from a month to half a year to wrap up. "Consequently," jokes YLU 95 member Lucas Hu, "we all end up completing a third year in our master's program or a fifth year of our undergraduate studies, and still we're unable to graduate."
Working part time, temping, interning.... With good jobs hard to find, "the impoverishment of youth" has become a thorny problem all around the world and is a central concern of Youth Labor Union 95.