Every year or so, the idea of shortening the workweek surfaces in the media, at an academic seminar, or in a government office. One of the most recent official attempts to implement such a policy happened four years ago, when several county magistrates and one small-city mayor tried to cut office hours for city and county employees. The idea was vehemently attacked by many segments of society—including their own subordinates. Businesspeople were still wary of the impact of a shorter workweek on their production figures and profit line, and office workers were apparently reluctant to change long-term work habits.
This time the feasibility of a reduced workweek for government employees is being studied by the central government. If adopted, the decision would put pressure on non-governmental offices to let their employees have Saturday morning off and on factories to back off from their typical 48-hour workweek.
But observers say the odds are strong that families will have to wait a while for two-day weekends. The idea of a forty-hour week still draws heavy fire, as the following assessment of the current debate indicates.
The Ministry of Personnel, Examination Yuan, is studying the feasibility of a shortened workweek for government employees and has released preliminary conclusions from a white paper it is preparing on the subject. The ministry is considering a reduction to forty hours, down from the forty-four hours that is standard at all levels of government. No date has yet been suggested for the change.
The ministry study points out that a reduced workweek is necessary, given Taiwan’s economic and social development and the growing public desire for more leisure time. Currently, government employees—and most other office workers—have an eight-hour workday Monday through Friday, plus a four-hour shift on Saturday. Factory workers usually have a forty-eight-hour week. The study calls for a cut to a five-day week, which would give more than half a million government employees an unprecedented two-day weekend. The ministry’s recommendation is expected to receive strong support from civil servants, who point out that office workers in many industrialized countries have long enjoyed similar hours. But for Taiwan to adopt a shorter workweek at this point could provoke strong objections from many sectors of society.
The weekend starts late—Theme parks, recreational areas, and other leisure-time spots are jammed from mid-Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, the only time most people have any free time.
The public, which has long been discontented with government inefficiency, may be concerned that a Monday-to-Friday work schedule will deprive them of government services. In a survey conducted late last year by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission of the Executive Yuan, 42 percent of the respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s administrative efficiency. Closing down government offices on Saturdays—an especially popular day to take care of official business—may provoke further public complaint. The five-day workweek could further impair administrative efficiency, because government agencies will have less time to deliver their services to the people.
But officials at the Ministry of Personnel dismiss this objection, claiming that government employees could adopt a shortened week and still maintain the five-and-a-half day responsibilities without affecting their performance. If that should prove to be true, critics reply, it would seem to indicate that civil servants have too light a workload. Therefore, the government should reduce the number of employees instead of cutting hours. Such a move would also help curb the ROC’s huge budget deficit.
The number of civil servants has been expanding at a steady rate of eleven thousand per year over the last decade, and their salaries take up more than 30 percent of the government’s annual budget. Although a plan has been under way since last year to cut civil servants at all levels by 5 percent within a three-year period, the reduction remains insignificant relative to the large work force, which now stands at 580,000.
It is also feared that the public will consider a reduced work schedule for government employees unfair. Many people may complain that public functionaries should not get more time off when most taxpayers in the private sector have longer hours.
Although the younger generation is generally more interested in having additional time for leisure, they don’t make policy. Bosses and managers worry that a cut in work time will hurt the bottom line.
But the strongest opposition to a change in the workweek could come from the business community, particularly the manufacturing sector. Under existing labor laws, private-company employees can be required to work up to forty-eight hours a week. They could demand a reduction in their workweek if the government decides to cut its already shorter week another four hours. According to Tsai Hsien-liu (蔡憲六), vice chairman of the Council of Labor Affairs, Executive Yuan, if private sector employers are forced to cut the hours of their workers, it will have a major impact on the output of the island’s manufacturing industries.
A workweek change could hit employers from two sides. They might have to pay the same wages for fewer hours and could also be saddled with more overtime pay. The Labor Law mandates that workers must receive double-time pay if they stay on the job extra hours.
Other observers warn that a shorter workweek could aggravate the labor shortage. In recent years, despite liberalized regulations to allow imports of foreign labor, the business community has been continuously suffering from an insufficient number of workers. If their workers were given a reduced workweek, it could make things even more difficult for many companies, especially those that need a large number of employees.
These problems cannot be ignored. A worsened labor shortage would inevitably bring more pressure on the government to liberalize further regulations on foreign laborers. Taiwan already has a large army of unskilled foreign workers. As of the end of March, the number of legal foreign laborers totaled about ninety thousand. Moreover, a jump in labor costs as a result of a reduced workweek could force more companies to move production to Mainland China or Southeast Asia, and such an increased outflow of direct investment could weaken Taiwan’s manufacturing base.
But despite all the adverse effects, it seems inevitable that Taiwan will eventually follow the example set by many industrial countries and adopt a shorter workweek for both government and non-government employees. In fact, some private companies have already adopted the two-day weekend. People are tiring of the long hours, especially now that Taiwan’s economy rivals those of the most advanced countries.
The argument that the government can reduce hours without harming services is an indication to many people that civil servants have too light a workload. They suggest an alternative: keep the longer hours and save money by cutting the number of government employees.
Employers also need to realize that some industrialized countries view the long hours and lower labor costs of developing countries as unfair trade practices and, in view of that, are seeking to take retaliatory measures. The United States, for example, is planning to propose a link between trade and labor standards for consideration at future meetings of GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), soon to be renamed the World Trade Organization (WTO). One key U.S. point calls on the 121-member trade-regulating organization to give industrial nations the right to impose special tariffs on products from developing countries as a means to cancel out the competitive advantage resulting from their labor practices.
Such proposals serve as a warning to local companies. In the future, they cannot always expect their employees to work long hours. Employers must therefore increase productivity as a means to cope with the problems that may arise from a shortened workweek.
In the public sector, the government might consider gradually reducing the work hours for its employees in order to minimize the impact of such a policy on society. Taiwan could learn from the experience of Japan, which took nearly ten years to shorten its workweek to five days. It remains to be seen whether the recommendations in the Ministry of Personnel’s white paper will also take a decade to implement. —Osman Tseng (曾慶祥) is a senior journalist based in Taipei. (Adapted with permission from Business Taiwan (April 11-17, 1994).)