MOL Interprets that Business Entities Employing Three or Fewer People May Obtain Individual Employee’s Approval in Place of Labor-Management Meeting’s Approval (Taiwan)

December 2022

Elizabeth Pai and Weke Chen

According to the Labor Standards Act, if an employer intends to take the following measures, the approval of the labor union or the approval of the labor-management meeting in the absence of a labor union in the business entity shall be obtained: implementation of flexible work hours (see Articles 30 and 30-1), overtime work (see Article 32), reduced rest hours between shifts (see Article 34), and adjustment of regular days off (see Article 36).  In addition, the provision that the night-time work of female employees shall be approved by the labor union or the labor-management meeting (see Article 49, Paragraph 1) has been declared unconstitutional by the No. 807 Judicial Interpretation.[1]  In the scenario where a business entity engages in any of the above measures without obtaining the approval of the labor union or the labor-management meeting pursuant to the above-mentioned laws and regulations, the competent authority may impose a fine of NT$20,000 to NT$1,000,000 (the amount of such fine may be increased by one-half of the maximum statutory fine, depending on the size of the business entity, the number of employees concerned for the violations, or the circumstances of the violation), publish the name of the business entity , and its legal representative, the date of punishment, the provisions that are violated and the fine amount. It may also order the business entity to rectify within a specified period. If no rectification has been conducted within the period, the punishment shall be imposed continuously based on the instance of violation.  (see Article 79, Paragraphs 1 and 4, and Article 80-1, Paragraph 1)

Regardless of the number of employees, business entities are required to conduct labor-management meetings in accordance with Article 83 of the Labor Standards Act and the Regulations for Implementing Labor-Management Meetings. For example, the business entity shall, in accordance with Article 20 of the Regulations for Implementing Labor-Management Meetings, give notice of the meeting seven days prior to the meeting and adopt resolutions of the meetings in accordance with the standards set forth in Article 19 of the same regulations.  This obligation is a burden for business entities employing only three or fewer employees.

To increase the flexibility of “micro-enterprise” employers, the Ministry of Labor issued the 111-Lao-Dong-Tiao-3-Zi 1110140959 Directive on October 28, 2022, which stipulates that if a business entity employing three or fewer employees intends to adopt the measures mentioned in the first paragraph of this article, it may “obtain the approval of individual employees respectively” instead of obtaining the approval from the labor-management meeting.

However, employers should still be mindful that once the number of employees reaches four or more, they are still required to obtain approval from the labor-management meeting if they intend to implement the measures outlined in the Labor Standards Act as mentioned in the first paragraph of this article (unless they have already got the approval of the labor-management meeting before).


[1] See the Newsletter published by our firm in October 2021,”Paragraph 1, Article 49 of the Labor Standards Act (restricting female employees from working at night) declared unconstitutional by the No.807 Judicial Interpretation (Taiwan) 


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