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Ex-toll collectors hunger strike enters day five
By Lii Wen / Staff reporter
Laid-off freeway toll collectors and their supporters yesterday hold a protest banner outside the National Taichung Theater in Greater Taichung.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Police officers try to remove a sit-down protester yesterday as laid-off freeway toll collectors and their supporters try to disrupt the opening ceremony of the National Taichung Theater in Greater Taichung.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
A hunger strike by four members of the Former Toll Collectors Self-Help Organization enters its fifth day today.
Former toll collectors Sun Hsiu-luan (孫秀鑾) and Ho Huei-ling (何慧玲) and labor activists Chen Su-hsiang (陳素香) and Yao Kuang-chu (姚光祖) have not eaten since Thursday afternoon, when they began their strike in front of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) headquarters in Taipei as part of a larger protest by the organization.
Although the demonstrators were removed by police less than two hours after beginning their protest, they moved to the front of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and set up camp, erecting several large tents filled with rubber mats and sleeping bags.
While a majority of the organization traveled to Greater Taichung yesterday to protest at a KMT rally and at the opening of the National Taichung Theater, more than a dozen of the former toll collectors remained at the Taipei site.
Ho, who spent 17 years working in toll booths, said she was not sure when the hunger strike would end.
Although toll collectors like Ho worked for many years, the ministry is providing them all with the same severance package — seven months’ salary — because they were officially considered to be “contract employees,” Chen said.
The laid-off workers should receive a full severance package, which for most would range from 10 to 20 months’ salary according to the number of years they worked, Chen said.
“Aside from the issue of unemployment, there are many problems the government has left unaddressed, ranging from the severance packages to the reduction in labor insurance pensions as a result of some be given low-paying new jobs,” Chen said.
Many former toll collectors have joined the hunger strike for shorter shifts of one or two days from their homes in central or southern Taiwan.
Students and other supporters are also participating, including Lin Tzu-ming (林子明), who said he has been part of the hunger strike for more than 72 hours.
“I am not here simply because I identify with the toll collector’s cause, I am concerned about the labor rights of all Taiwanese,” he said. “In a way, I’m also doing this for myself.”
The toll collectors lost their jobs after the ministry switched to a distance-based electronic toll collection system in January, removing all toll booths and leaving about 1,000 toll collectors unemployed.
source: Taipei Times
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