dc.description.abstract | Since 2000 Taiwan has been moving towards the stage of knowledge-based economy and thus the structure of industries and occupations have been changing rapidly, and both employers and employees demand for a more flexibile work schedule in order to coup with the new economic environment. In response to these needs the government has revised the Labor Standards Law to relex the work hour regulations and thus make work hours more flexible. However, most employers in Taiwan still have the rigid and fixed work schedule. According to IMD, in 2005 employees in Taiwan had the longest annual work hours in the world. The purpose of this study is to investigate the present situation of work hours in Taiwan, factors affecting work schedule and pattern of work hours, comparing work hour preference between blue and white collar employees, employees demand for flexibile work schedule and work hours, and finally the possibilities of making work hour more flexible in Taiwan.
This study is divided into three parts, by using data collected by government and supplmented by data collected by this writer via mailed questionnaires we first provide the descriptive statistics of these data and then logistic regression of these government and privately collected data. In the first part of this paper we analyze data collected by the government. The results show that work hours in Taiwan have been shortened since 1980, and males have longer work hours than females. Most employees expressed the gaps between their ideal and actual work hours. At the same time, the problem of working time preference of the female is more serious than the male. Before 1995, 25-49 year-old male employees worked the longest work hours, while since 2000 employees who are 50 years old and above have the longest work hours and older female workers have shorter work hours. In general workers male amd female alike who are better educated enjoy shorter work hours.
Since white and blue collar workers have different preference towards work hours and since Taiwan is moving towards knowledge-based economy which means ther will be more and more white collear workers and there we sent out mailed questionnaires to a sample of white collar workers in the Notheren part of Taiwan in finding out the work hour preference of these white collar workers. In the second part of this study we analyze these mailed questionnaires and the results show that the work hours for white collear have not been decling in recent years and male white collar workers work longer hours than their counterparts, female white collar workers. There are gaps between white collar workers’ ideal and actual work hours also, and the gap is wider for females than for male workers. It is also interesting to find that better educated white collar workers would like to work more hours than the hours they currently have becausae there is an association between the length of work hours and the opportunity of promotion.
In the third part of this study we discuss the ways in which Taiwan government can learn from foreign governments in closing the gap between idea and actual work hours of the employees in Taiwan. | en_US |