萬國法律事務所

The Council of Labor Affairs (“CLA”) is planning to amend the Regulations of Leave-Taking of Workers in order to extend the workers’ entitlement for medical leaves in cases of tocolysis treatment during pregnancy and for cancer rehabilitation. In the future, workers will be able to apply for a maximum of one-year leave within two years as compared to the current entitlement of 30 days in one year for tocolysis treatment during pregnancy and cancer rehabilitation. This will however not affect the existing salary scheme.

On the other hand, there are concerns from female workers that, even with the implementation of the new regulations, they will still hesitate to apply for such long leaves due to fears of losing the job. Further, the labor union is of the opinion that this new amendment is still too rigid to cover the needs of the workers.

The current Regulations on Leave-Taking by Workers provides that when a worker must receive medical service or rest on account of ordinary injury, sickness or physical reasons, the worker shall be entitled to ordinary medical leave. For non-hospitalized cases, workers can apply for a total of less than thirty days medical leave in one year and, for hospitalized cases, workers can apply for medical leave not exceeding one year within two years. If the accounted ordinary medical leave does not exceed thirty days in one year, fifty percent of salary must be paid. Workers with ordinary medical leave exceeding the prescribed days may not receive salary.

The CLA states that many of the workers who must take leave for tocolysis treatment during pregnancy or for cancer rehabilitation may not necessarily be hospitalized for the period of the treatment but they may still need to take long medical leaves. Therefore, the CLA intends to enable the aforesaid categories of workers to take medical leaves for a maximum of one year within two years.

The CLA perceives this planned amendment as part of the “Action Plan to Improve Civilian Life”. So far the amendments are still in the drafting process and are yet to be announced publicly and reviewed by the Legal Affairs Committee of the CLA.

Even though the intention of the CLA is encouraging, there is fear that this may cause employers to be reluctant to appoint pregnant workers. Furthermore, with the downturn of the economy, such long leaves taken by the workers may cause difficulties in manpower and substantially increase the cost of companies.