萬國法律事務所

Regarding whether recovering the seven national holidays for employees, it is said that the Ministry of Labor is considering two resolutions. The first resolution is maintaining the administrative order that cancelling 7 National Holidays for employees, but adding 7 days' Family Care Leave for employees. The second resolution is maintaining the administrative order that cancelling 7 National Holidays for employees, but implementing the two days off per week policy earlier.

Under the first resolution, the days of National Holidays and Family Care Leave for public servants and employees will be identical.

As to the second resolution, the Ministry of Labor proposes to amend Article 36 of the Labor Standard Act to provide employees one regular day off and one day off in every seven days, which equals to compulsorily providing two days off per week for employees, because many employees still cannot have two days off every week even the weekly working hours have been reduced to 40 hours from this year.

It should be noted that, either resolution mentioned above will increase the employers' costs. Therefore, the resolutions must persuade the business group, the upper level of the DPP, and legislators.

The president of the Safeguard Commercial Association said that once following the employee group's opinion to providing 7 national holidays for the employees, the total increasing operating costs of enterprises in Taiwan will be NTD 57 billion per year. The representative of Utensil Association said that if the government only support high-tech enterprise, the employee group and legislators keep increasing holidays for employees, and the new government does not take care of Small and Medium Enterprise, the Small and Medium Enterprises can only shut down or move to abroad.