Lawmakers Urge Lower Pay Transparency Threshold and Support Social Worker Unions

Today is World Day for Decent Work, and the issues of youth low wages and labor rights in Taiwan have once again become the focus of attention in the Legislative Yuan and across society. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Yueh-chin held a press conference in Taipei, proposing specific policy reform directions to address the stagnant wages and low-income dilemmas commonly faced by Taiwan's current young generation. She called on the Ministry of Labor to start by improving "wage transparency," urging it to promptly review and lower the current disclosure threshold—which mandates that salaries below a certain amount must be made public—so that job seekers can have access to more sufficient information before entering the workplace. This, she argued, would eliminate exploitation caused by information asymmetry and further compel enterprises to raise their compensation levels.

In addition to wage transparency, Lin also turned her attention to aligning international economic and trade agreements with labor rights. She pointed out that economic and trade exchanges between Taiwan and the United States have grown increasingly close in recent years, and if the relevant commitments in the U.S.-Taiwan reciprocal trade agreements are to be implemented in the future, the improvement of labor conditions is an indispensable and crucial link. Labor union organizations are not merely tools for labor-management negotiations, but should also become a vital force in stabilizing the labor market and substantially improving working conditions. By strengthening the functions of unions, workers can be granted sufficient collective bargaining rights and institutional guarantees when facing industrial transformation and the shocks of international trade, ensuring that the fruits of economic growth are reasonably distributed to grassroots workers.

Regarding specific professional fields, Lin particularly singled out helping professions such as social workers, who have long supported the operation of Taiwanese society yet face disproportionate working conditions and salaries. She encouraged these core workers who prop up the social safety net to actively organize unions, striving for their due rights through collective strength. For a long time, social workers have shouldered heavy social expectations and high-risk operational pressures, but their wage structures and working conditions have often failed to receive commensurate treatment. Promoting the unionization of social workers will not only help improve the labor dignity of practitioners, but also stabilize the social work workforce, thereby enhancing the overall quality and sustainability of social welfare services.

Examining Taiwan's labor market structure in recent years, the gap between youth low wages and rising prices has consistently been one of the main reasons why young people dare not marry or have children. Wage transparency policies have been proven internationally to be an effective tool for narrowing the gender wage gap and ameliorating overall low wages. Although current regulations govern the disclosure of job vacancies with salaries falling below a specific amount, the threshold is often too high, causing many vacancies to still gloss over compensation with "negotiable" during recruitment. In the absence of a wage benchmark, job seekers often lose their bargaining power. The call by the DPP legislator this adjustment to the disclosure threshold is precisely intended to start from the regulatory source, strengthen the price discovery function of the labor market, and bring salary trends into the light.

Viewed from the spirit of World Day for Decent Work, labor is not merely a means of subsistence, but also a pathway to demonstrating individual dignity and realizing social value. If Taiwan is to maintain its economic momentum in a highly competitive international society, it must rely not only on the performance of its high-tech industries, but even more on a solid and respected labor force. From promoting wage transparency and fulfilling labor commitments in international trade agreements to encouraging grassroots and social service workers to organize unions, this series of policy initiatives echoes one another, pointing toward the same core objective: constructing a fairer, more transparent, and inclusive labor environment, allowing every hardworking citizen to enjoy a life of decent work.

(Source: Central News Agency)