Taiwan’s First Airline Strike Inspires Workers in Other Sectors to Reflect on Their Rights · Global Voices
China Airline flight attendants’ strike in Taipei on June 24. Photo credit: <PERSON>. Republished by Global Voices with permission.
For the first time in its history, Taiwan witnessed a strike within the airline industry on June 24. Several thousand China Airlines (CAL) flight attendants protesting against a change to their working conditions first rallied in front of the Taipei branch headquarters. The strike then dramatically developed into an occupation of Nanjing East Road in the city center. The action resulted in the cancellation of 122 flights on Friday and Saturday; around 10,000 passengers were affected.
The strike came to an end the same day, with CAL flight attendants winning important concessions from the airline. And their success hasn't gone unnoticed by workers in other sectors in Taiwan.
What triggered the strike was the unilateral decision of CAL's management to reset flight attendants’ report-for-duty location without discussing with the flight attendants first. This affects the calculation of their working hours, cutting the report-for-duty time before flight take-off from 140 minutes to 90 minutes and off-duty time after the flight has landed from 60 minutes to 30 minutes only.
By cutting their working hours, the company can squeeze more flights into flight attendants’ schedules without giving them full rest time between flights. 310
In other words, the change exploits flight attendants’ rest time. In addition, a new contract that the airline requested them to sign recently extended their working hours from 174 hours per month to 220 hours per month.
The tension between the airline workers and the Taiwanese government-dominated enterprise has been escalating for many years. The company has been criticized for extremely long work hours and low pay on holiday shifts.
Smaller-scale demonstrations have taken place in the past two years. In September 2014, some flight attendants protested against the increased number of red-eye flights and the reduced number of flight attendants on each flight. In response, airline management issued a warning to them for protesting and suggested that they raise the issue in negotiations instead of protesting.
In January 2015, CAL’s workers protested again for their salary and bonus. The airline management did not respond to their request, but they penalized protesting flight attendants by transferring their job to customer service and forcing them to be re-trained.
After a huge CAL labor protest at the end of May 2016, CAL management proceeded to fire two members of the technicians’ union. At the same time, the union of flight attendants decided to vote for a strike that could force the airline management to take them seriously. This time, 2,535 out of the 2,638 members of the CAL flight attendants union voted in support of the strike.
After a five-hour negotiation, the company, under pressure from the government, agreed to restore the previous working hour calculation policy, consult with worker representatives on policy changes in the future, ensure sufficient holidays, and increase the flight attendants’ daily allowance at the destination location. The strike ended in the late evening on June 24.
On Facebook, one of the protesting flight attendants said:
今天華航員工被資方壓榨，其實只是全台灣勞工的縮影
台灣的經濟成長率幾乎年年為正，請問你的薪水有漲嗎？[…]
就算企業賺錢，打工仔還是領最低薪資、老闆還是給你差不多的薪水，剩下的錢通通進到他們口袋
社會資源都大集團壟斷、勞資越來越不平衡，也難怪年輕人看不到未來，怎麼拼都還是條魯蛇
所以，就讓我們開革命的第一槍吧！
Today the staff of CAL are exploited by management, and this is just one of the cases that labor face every day in Taiwan. 368