13.5% of workers in Taiwan not given overtime pay

This was revealed in a recent Ministry of Labour (MOL) survey, which collated 4,130 responses from Taiwanese workers to questions about job satisfaction, work environment, and career planning in 2021.

Workers who were satisfied with their jobs formed 72.5%, up 1.3 percentage points year-on-year. Those who expressed average job satisfaction made up 25%, while 2% said they were not satisfied.

About 46.3% of respondents said they had worked overtime in the past year, a rise of 2.5 percentage points compared to 2020, with the average overtime being 14.9 hours per month.

By sector, the science and technology service sector had 57.7% of its workers reporting extra hours on the job. This was followed by the finance and insurance sector which saw 55.3% of its staff working overtime compared with the publishing, movie, music, and information technology sector’s 54.3%.

READ: Taiwan’s gender pay gap rises to 15.8% in 2021

About 13.5% of respondents said they had not received extra pay or compensation leave in return for the extra hours they put in. The education sector was the worst offender with up to 31.4% of employees not being paid for their overtime work, followed by 25.5% in the publishing, movie, music, and IT sector, and 22.9% in the financial and insurance sector.

A total of 4.2% of respondents said they had been working up to an additional 46 hours per month, though not every month, according to Taiwan News.