The Political Economy of Labor Dispute Settlements on Unfair Labor Practices in Taiwan, 2011-2012

Since the ‘New Labor Tri-Act’ has been activated on the 1st of May 2011, the drastic change of overall content, which led to an unfortunate result of everlasting labor disputes in multiple occasions. Both capital and labor should adjust the attitude and reform the methodology in order to face the newly established legal environment. The Act for Settlement of Labor-Management Disputes took a reference from Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) of United States, updated with a chapter of ‘Decision’, expecting it could provide similar performance of recovering the right of those labors who fall victim rapidly. Yet, the regulation of Anti-ULP (Unfair Labor Practice) is set particularly aiming at capital, which shows well with a lack of integrity and fairness.
Though the ‘Decision mechanism’ has now run more than a year, it demonstrated only complexity and time-consuming on labor dispute and private/non-private divergence issues, which, comparing to the United States and Japan, contains lesser independency and questionable specified responsibility, and drove situation to further chaos. It has been proven, by researching case studies, closed Decisions benefit the side of labor in higher portion.
In the dissertation, despite analyzing the design of ‘Decision mechanism’ to clarify problems on legal and execution phase, comparing with Decision mechanism operation and features of ULP from United States and Japan as study material, the following content as well conducted up-to-date closed Decision cases analysis, then discuss problematic of ‘Decision mechanism’ relative procedure and specific cases executed by the ‘Board for Decision’, according to analytical case studies. In general, the over extended and complex design of Decision procedure, and the yet to be confirmed Decision-derived effect have against the will of introducing and import the structure of ADR to the new Act. It should be the organization of Board for Decision, alongside with committee member qualification and election system that have disturbed the Act’s independency and responsibility-specification. Debate should it be appropriate executing the Decision as an order while the procedure of Decision comes across the private right. Discuss issue that before the responsibilities of members of Board has been clarified, should the Board able to produce conclusion of cases those have private right involved. And, under circumstance Board for Decision is not qualified with quasi-judicial power, does the review intensity powerful enough to protect the rights of people. Explore possibilities of connection and relation between Decision, including orders of certain actions to take and not to take, and labor policy. The thesis discusses formation and operation of ULP Decision, and evaluates the suitability of current decree content and its system by matching the equivalent in both United States and Japan. The end result is presumed to provide practical suggestion and support to the system for possible future adjustment.