Sunday, June 9, 2013

Students protest against NTU lawsuit/兼任助理非僱傭 台大工會抗議

兼任助理非僱傭 台大工會抗議
「台大撤告!別再硬拗!」台灣大學昨舉辦校務會議,台大工會一早就在場外高聲抗議。理事長黃守達指出,勞委會訴願決定書已認定兼任教學助理、國科會兼任研究助理、國科會研究計畫臨時工等與校方皆有僱傭關係,但台大仍堅持不認,還向勞委會提起行政訴訟,要求台大立即撤告並與工會對等協商。
校長李嗣涔回應:「跟著老師學習與研究,這是很重要的師生關係,突然要變成上班打卡的勞雇關係,茲事體大。需要清楚釐清,因此行政會議中決議透過法定程序進行。」撤告要求未果,研協會與學代大會議長於校務會議離席抗議。
台大兩週後將舉行校長交接典禮,昨是李嗣涔任內最後一次主持校務會議。他在會議末了感性致詞,一度哽咽。他說卸任後將暫時休息,但會繼續貢獻教學。 (記者陳怡靜)

Students protest against NTU lawsuit


By Loa Iok-sin / Staff report

National Taiwan University Union president Huang Shou-ta speaks at a protest outside a faculty council meeting in Taipei yesterday.

Student activists protested outside a National Taiwan University (NTU) faculty council meeting yesterday against the school administration’s decision to file a lawsuit against the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) over the council’s recognition of student assistants as workers that have the right to unionize.
Chanting slogans and holding up signs accusing the NTU administration of suppressing union activities, dozens of students from not only NTU, but also National Chengchi University and National Tsing Hua University, rallied outside an NTU student center as a faculty council took place inside.
“In a written statement released by the CLA on April 11, the agency clearly stated that teaching assistants, National Science Council (NSC) project research assistants, and temporary NSC project assistants are all considered NTU employees,” NTU Union president Huang Shou-ta (黃守達) said. “However, instead of accepting the CLA’s decision, the NTU questioned it and filed an administrative lawsuit against the CLA.”
“The NTU administration is apparently try to avoid its obligations as an employer,” he added.
Initiated by NTU students, the formation of the student assistants union was approved by the Taipei City Department of Labor in April.
However, since the city’s labor department only recognizes full-time research assistants and part-time workers as university employees, the union appealed to the council, which ruled that teaching assistants and project assistants should all be considered employees.
The university disagreed with the council’s decision and filed an administrative lawsuit in a bid to overturn the decision.
Speaking to the media, NTU president Lee Si-chen (李嗣涔) said the relationship between a teacher and a student should not be defined as an employer-to-employee relationship.
“The council’s definition of the relationship between teachers and students has become twisted with this decision,” he said. “We want to clarify it through the lawsuit.”
Huang disagreed with Lee.
“Of course, a teaching assistant is not a typical worker, but a student of a teacher. However, giving teaching assistants the status of an employee would bring them under the protection of labor laws and prevent professors from giving them an unreasonable amount of work,” he said.
In addition to the protest outside the meeting, student representatives who attended the meeting also protested NTU’s move.
“The school administration has become twisted in the past year as it attempts to prevent students from unionizing,” NTU Student Association president Lin Wei-han (林韋翰) said during the meeting.