Kuai Kuai workers set to vote on ending strike today

• By Lee Jung-ping / Staff reporter, with CNA

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The Kuai Kuai union’s strike would likely end today after Kuai Kuai Co agreed to union demands, said the Taoyuan City Government’s Department of Labor yesterday.

Department commissioner Lee Hsien-hsiang (李賢祥) made the remark after holding a negotiations yesterday afternoon between the union and the company, during which he said company chairman Chung Yu-lin (鍾育霖) agreed to the union’s demands.

Under the proposed terms, employees who resign following a job transfer would receive four months’ additional pay on top of the statutory severance package, while those who choose not to relocate with the company two years after the plant move would receive eight months’ additional compensation in addition to statutory severance pay.

Members of the Kuai Kuai worker’s union protest in front of the Ministry of Labor in Taipei yesterday.

Photo courtesy of the Taoyuan Confederation of Trade Unions via CNA

Union Chairman Liu Neng-hung (劉能宏) said the union would hold a provisional meeting today to vote on the proposal and would call off the strike if it is approved.

Earlier yesterday, the union, whose members work at the company’s Jhongli factory, voiced their concerns during a protest outside the Ministry of Labor in Taipei, four days after workers began a strike that was later extended indefinitely.

The dispute arose after Kuai Kuai workers learned in July through the news that Kuai Kuai, which has been owned by the San-Ti Group since 2019, sold the Jhongli site to Advanced Semiconductor Engineering for NT$5.67 billion (US$178.37 million).

As part of the deal, Kuai Kuai would lease back parts of the site for up to two years while preparing to relocate.

The deal sparked concern among workers that the company would abandon them and force them into resigning by relocating without paying them severance and other layoff benefits.

In response to the strike on Friday, Kuai Kuai said it would not lay off workers for the two years it remains at the Jhongli site, and would provide statutory severance plus two months’ wages for ensuing layoffs.

Peng Kuei-mei (彭桂梅), a union board member, said the no-layoff pledge “provides employees with no protection at all,” saying that the company could still meet that pledge if workers left on their own, in which case they would not receive severance.

Employees who left after the relocation because the new factory was too far away or had unsuitable working conditions could be denied severance because they were not formally laid off, she said.

To deal with the issue, the union is seeking compensation for any relocation, which could impose a heavier burden on the factory’s many middle-aged and older workers, who might struggle to find new jobs or adapt to a new work location, it said.

Peng questioned the company’s uncertain relocation plans, with Pingtung County and then Hsinchu and Taoyuan being considered but no site being secured.

“How can employees be expected to keep working for two years and believe they will still have jobs afterward?” Peng said.

The union said that a labor broker had twice brought migrant workers to the picket line on Friday last week and asked them whether they wanted to enter the factory to work, in what the union said was an attempt to get them to cross the picket line.

The union questioned whether an employer or broker should be allowed to require migrant workers to make such declarations.

In response to the protest, Chin Shih-ping (金士平), a section chief at the labor ministry’s Department of Employment Relations, reiterated that companies must not subject workers participating in union activities or strikes to “adverse treatment.”

Asked specifically about the broker’s actions, Chin described the circumstances as “complicated” and would require further review before the ministry could take a position.

According to the union, the plant has about 160 Taiwanese employees, including 155 union members, and about 60 migrant workers, mainly from Vietnam and Indonesia, none of whom are union members.