The research of the Taiwan railway labor union's influence on policy by collective action

• Main Authors: CHU,YEN-HUA, 朱彥華
• Other Authors: 楊泰順
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/77841468245933644041

博士 === 中國文化大學 === 政治學研究所 === 97 === Since 1989, privatization of state-owned enterprises had been executed on schedule by the Executive Yuan in Taiwan. However, state-owned enterprise unions launched a series of protesting and lobbying activities to protect their jobs rights and benefits. Their actions and appeals had highly drawn the public’s attention This research is probed into the issue on the lobbying behaviors, strategies and effects of state-owned enterprise unions taking example of Taiwan Railway Labor Union(TRLU)’s lobby influence on legislature and policy during 2000-2004. The union had successfully influenced the policy and delayed the schedule of privatization. Their success came from these three factors:(1)the effective collective action on 9/11/2003 to get the legal approval for demonstration in Chinese New Year.(2)the potential serious effect from demonstration in Chinese New Year.(3)the good timing due to the coming presidential election in 2004. However, Mancur Olson’s theory proposes that the collective action should fail to influence the policy where rational and self-interest-seeking ones lead to free-rider behaviors without optional incentives. The study takes examples of the action of TRLU on 9/11/2003 comparing to Olson’s theory and finds the success of the action majorly came from the special organizational culture. The special culture has been formed by a working system bringing good interactions between members and also by good cooperation experiences resulting from historic events. The study also finds there were no optional incentives offered by TRLU. The sense of Honor and negative incentives prevented TRLU’ s members from being free riders. In addition, there are two industrial characteristics strengthening the effect of TRLU’s lobbying behavior:(1)the monopoly of Taiwan Railways Administration in railway transportation industry.(2)the significant seasonal transportation demand peaking on long holidays and important festivals. However, TRLU’s lobbying wasn’t as effective as that in our case when it encountered its new strong competitor, Taiwan HighSpeed Rail Group, a private company.