萬國法律事務所

Taiwan’s Ministry of Labor (MOL) proposed a new amendment to the existing labor policy, which will lower down the threshold of service period at a company from one year to six months when determining whether an employee is qualified for the non-paid parental leave. Under the current Act of Gender Equality in Employment, the parental leave is only granted to employees with service duration exceeding one year. However, due to the financial difficulties, the new amendment will still maintain the current policy that people on parental leave are eligible to apply for a 60-percent maternity allowance from the government only when such employees have been with a company and insured for over a year. In other words, in the future, some employees with service duration less than one year may be granted the parental leave but cannot receive the said maternity allowance.

MOL also expressed that they have gathered many experts to discuss whether to shorten the statutory working hours from 84 hours per two weeks to 40 hours per week., and if the said amendment passes, the current 46 hours maximum overtime hours per month will also be extended to 54 to 60 hours per month. MOL further stated according to the amendment, if any compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay is not used up within half year, the employee will be entitled to receive payment for such unused compensatory time off at its original monetary value. The above amendments will be finalized by MOL by the end of this year, and MOL will attempt to have such amendment passed and made effective in 2016.