Under the amendments, workers must have joined the labor insurance program for at least one year to be eligible for the monthly subsidies, whose amount would be equal to 60 percent of the applicant’s monthly salary.
Subsidies will be given to parents for up to six months, while the unemployed may receive benefits for nine months maximum, up from six months under the existing rules.
The parental subsidy and extended unemployment benefits will go into effect by May 1—Labor Day, “as a big present for the workers,” announced Council of Labor Affairs Minister Wang Ju-hsuan.
Government officials said if both parents take turns to make use of the parental leave to care for the same child, both are qualified for the subsidies for up to six months each, or 12 months altogether.
According to the CLA, the parental subsidy demonstrates an improvement in gender equality in terms of employment opportunities, as it encourages both the mother and the father to share the same responsibility in child rearing.
The Male and Female Equality in Employment Act—the origin of the Gender Equality in Employment Act—promulgated in 2002 stipulates that both men and women may ask for unpaid parental leave for up to two years until their children reach three years of age.
Statistics from the CLA show that only 3 percent of the more than 100,000 women covered by the Labor Insurance who gave birth between 2006 and 2008 took unpaid parental leaves during this period.
During these three years, 2,721 insured women and 77 men took leave in 2006, 3,206 females and 108 males did so in 2007, and 3,541 mothers and 150 fathers asked for leave in 2008. Although statistics showed that there was a drastic difference between the number of men and women who took parental leaves, they demonstrated that there is a growing trend as in 2002, only 1,160 women and 59 men took time off.
Ho Yeu, executive director of the Taipei-based Chinese National Industrial Federation, said that over 3,000 of the people who took parental leaves were employees of state-run businesses, who enjoy job security, compared with around 100 working for private companies. The staff of private enterprises generally hesitate to leave their jobs for several months, as they fear they may end up at the top of the lay-off list as a consequence, Ho explained.
Ho further added that in order to fully address the nursing issue for either infants or the elderly, the government needs to set up a community-based daycare system so that parents of young kids or people with elderly family members can go to work without worrying about them. “The parental-leave subsidy alone does not take care of the problem on a comprehensive scale,” the executive director commented.
“In the meantime, if the daycare system recruited the unemployed, such as the elderly, or teachers that have been laid off due to a declining number of students, it would contribute to solving the unemployment problem,” Ho said during a telephone interview April 6.
Write to Jean Yueh at yueh@mail.gio.gov.tw