• The “Five Day Work Week” policy is a strange and confusing policy for Taiwanese people

• Starting from December, any employees working overtime must be compensated

• To make up for revenue lost, a lot of employers are forced to find more workers

Tsai Ing-Wen, the first female president in Taiwan, made lots of new policies. The most unacceptable one for Taiwanese is the “Five Day Work Week” policy (also known as the “One case of a break”). It is a strange and confusing policy for Taiwanese people.

Tsai Ing-Wen amended the Labor Standards Act so workers can take one more day off in a week. She didn’t want people to work for so long; she thinks that people shouldn’t need to go to work on weekends if it’s not an emergency. People need to take breaks regularly.

First, people wanted this law to pass eagerly so many of the workers supported it. However, Tsai Ing-Wen just said, “go ask your boss” coldly. However, in the end, she let this law pass in December.

So, starting from December, if any boss makes their workers work overtime, they’ll have to pay them more. For example, when working overtime, if a worker has been on for less than two hours, they get 1 ⅓ times their normal salary. If they work for about three hours, the workers can get 1 ⅔ times their normal salary.

Also, workers are not allowed to work overtime if their boss hasn’t told them to. Sometimes they might try to do it just because they want to earn more money.

Up until now, lots of people still might not know a lot about this five day work week. It is complex and sometimes it may bring us some problems. For example, you may not be able to go to your favorite restaurant on weekends, because they might be taking a break during the weekend due to this policy.

Also, you can see many hiring notices in Taiwan. Part of the reason for this is because of the “Five Day Work Week” policy. Many bosses want to make more money. However, since workers need to take a day off, the boss can’t make as much money as they used to earn. So, to make up the money they lose, lots of bosses need to find more workers.

Even though this policy can let workers take more breaks, most people don’t really like this policy. It is inconvenient for most people – not only the workers, but also the bosses. So, Tsai Ing-Wen’s policy isn’t a really good idea and needs to be improved in the future.