More than 25% of Taiwanese have to work off-the-clock: Survey

Taipei, Jan. 31 (CNA) More than a quarter of employees in Taiwan have to deal with company business outside working hours, and they put in an average of 4.7 hours off-the-clock, according to the results of an annual survey released by the Ministry of Labor (MOL) Tuesday.

The survey, which was conducted from June 2021 to May 2022 and focused on domestic workers' living and employment conditions, found that 25.2 percent of respondents performed work off-the-clock, up one percentage point from the previous survey.

Off-the-clock activities were defined as receiving work-related messages from employers via e-communications, including phones, the internet, mobile phone apps, Line and other social media, after getting off work.

Those who said they received these messages worked an average of 4.7 hours per month beyond their regular working hours, up 0.1 hours from the previous survey.

Meanwhile, the survey found that 42.0 percent of respondents worked overtime during the survey period, down 4.3 percentage points from the previous survey, but their average overtime hours rose 0.1 hours per month to 15.0 hours.

By industry, overtime was most common in the electricity and natural gas supply sectors, with 58.6 percent of respondents from those sectors working overtime, followed by the public administration and national defense/compulsory social insurance sectors (54.8 percent).

The professional, scientific and technical services sectors (54.7 percent) and the publishing, audio-visual, and information and communications sectors (54.2 percent) came next.

The survey also found that 84.1 percent of respondents who did overtime were paid for it or given paid time off in its place.

According to the survey, 73.4 percent of respondents were satisfied with their overall employment conditions, up 0.9 points from the previous survey.

Gender equality at work, good working relationships, and supervisors' concern for employees were areas that a vast majority of respondents said were satisfactory, the survey found.

Wages as well as employee performance appraisal and promotion systems were the major causes of job dissatisfaction, cited by 73.6 percent and 71.3 percent of respondents, followed by workload (64.1 percent).

In terms of remote work, 72 percent of workers said they were not given the option to work from home, while 20 percent said they had previously worked from home.

The poll also found that 86.2 percent of respondents did not have any retirement plans, while 13.8 percent did have plans and expected to retire at 61.3 years of age on average.

Around two-thirds, or 66.9 percent, of respondents cited the labor insurance and pension funds as their main sources of planned retirement income, followed by personal savings (66.2 percent).