A Study on the Nature of Abandoned Worker Cases

• Main Authors: Wang, Fu-Mei, 王富美
• Other Authors: Huang,Chun-Chieh
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/q69c35

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 會計資訊與法律數位學習碩士在職專班 === 103 === This paper aims to study the nature of abandoned workers suffered from vicious shutdowns of factories such as Lianfu Clothing (1996) and Dong-ling Electronics Co., where the total amount of unpaid salary, pension and severance pay reached NT$240 million. Ministry of Labor (originally known as the Council of Labor Affairs) firstly appropriated employment security funds to support these abandoned workers, but then demanded them to repay the loans due to National Audit Office’s rectification. The abandoned workers refused to accept it and formed the Alliance of Abandoned Workers to make a stand against it. The court eventually sentenced that the right of claim under public law should be extinguished ipso facto upon completion of the prescription. Ministry of Labor therefore waived the right to appeal, revoked the action and returned already paid loans. Whether the case is related to private law or belongs to administrative contract, civil courts in the past all considered it as a private loan for consumption. Nevertheless, there was a discrepancy among the courts as it was also believed as subrogation: some believed that it was related to public law and needed to be transferred to high administrative court by ruling; some requested Grand Justices to unify the interpretation and suspend the action by ruling; and some thought that the trial should be continued according to civil procedures. The reason that the employers failed to contribute pension reserves according to the law and delayed the payment of employees’ severance pay for a very long period of time was that Ministry of Labor did not fulfill its legal obligations of supervision. Derived social compensation was therefore considered as causation payment. A number of legal concepts were involved in the cases including “protection of people's rights to litigate”, “social compensation”, “jurisdiction of administrative court”, “differences between the public and private laws”, “extinctive prescription of the right of claim under public law” and so on. This research has specially collected relevant theories and practices to analyze the nature and content of loan contract with an expectation to fix discrepant opinions. The cases of abandoned workers have not only aroused the community’s attention to labors’ rights, but also changed judicature’s positioning of administrative agencies. It is the author’s expectation to make contributions on the judicial meaning of today’s labor movement through this study and to provide administrative agencies a reference of working out labor protection policies.