Emily Chueh
The Supreme Administrative Court rendered the 108-Pan-193 Decision of April 19, 2019 (hereinafter, the “Decision”), holding that a full-time teacher who concurrently serves, not pursuant to laws and regulations, as the representative of a business which has merely registered its business suspension but not its closedown is still deemed to work part-time illegally.
According to the facts underlying this Decision, the Appellant was previously the representative of Enterprise A, which had applied to register its business suspension (hereinafter, the “Suspension”). When the Appellant became a teacher of the Appellee’s school, such enterprise was still in existence and had not registered its closedown or annulment with the Appellant still serving concurrently as its representative. The Appellant had not applied for closedown registration until the Appellee learned about this in April 2015 and notified the Appellant to provide an explanation. The Appellee found, as a result of a resolution adopted during its internal evaluation meeting, that the Appellant had engaged in illegal part-time work for concurrently serving as the “representative, director and supervisor of a company (firm) in suspension,” and the Appellant was sanctioned with an admonition (hereinafter, the “Original Disposition”). The Appellant brought an administrative action pursuant to applicable procedures. After the original trial court ruled against the Appellant, the Appellant filed this appeal.
According to this Decision, the commercial entity of a business, be it a sole proprietorship or a partnership, still exists if it has only registered its suspension rather than its closedown. A full-time teacher who concurrently serves as the representative of such business is still deemed to work part-time illegally.
It was further pointed out in this Decision that the Ministry of Education (formerly the Administration for National and Preschool Education) has formulated a reference table on the standards for disciplinary action in reference to the Determination Standards, Sanction Principles and Reference Standards prescribed by the Ministry of Civil Service to clarify the illegality, culpability and sanction standards for all types of violations. This reference table not only allows schools below the level of public senior schools to impose sanctions based on the severity of individual cases but also serves as the basis for penalizing a full-time teacher who has worked part-time illegally in order to prevent law enforcement personnel from arbitrary action in violation of principles of equality and proportionality. Since it was determined that restrictions not stipulated under the law were not added in the Original Disposition and that there was no violation of Article 34 of the Statute for the Employment of Educators and the Rules for Teachers’ Performance Evaluation, it was concluded that the Original Disposition was not unlawful for imposing a sanction pursuant to the above requirements. Therefore, the Plaintiff’s appeal was dismissed.