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The Mass Labor Layoff Protection Law contains 21 articles and was promulgated by the President on 7 February 2003. The law is enacted with the goal of safeguarding labor's right to work and harmonizing employer's right to management, avoiding labor's rights being infringed or possibly being infringed as the result of laying off labors en masse by enterprises, and maintaining social stability. The essential points are:
1)That the central competent authority shall be the Council of Labor affairs of the Executive Yuan, and local competent authorities shall be the municipal government and county (city) government (Article 3)
2)To define the meaning of 'mass layoff', and to indicate the limitation on the duration, number and ratio of labors being laid off (Article 2)
3)That enterprises shall take some preliminary actions before intending to lay off labors en masse, such as informing local administrative agencies, submitting a layoff proposal and giving prior notice to labors (Article 4)
4)That the labor-management shall negotiate, based on the spirit of self-reliance, within ten days after the enterprise submintting the layoff proposal, and the labor authority shall, in case the labor-management refuse to negotiate or fail to reach agreement, summon both sides to organize a negotiation council in engaging the negotiation based on the layoff proposal, and timely putting forward an alternate proposal (Article 5)
5)That local labor authorities shall automatically convene a meeting, in dealing with mass layoff by an enterprise, at least once bi-weekly, of the labor-management negotiation commission, and provide employment services-related consultation for the meeting; to indicate organization and functions of this commission as well as effectiveness of agreement reached over the meeting (Article 6~8)
6)To provide safeguards to labors during the period of prior layoff notice (Article 10)
7)That enterprises shall preferentially hire mass layoff labors in event of re-hiring labors with closely related characteristics (Article 9)
8)That administrative agencies or personnel concerned shall inform the labor authority about some happenings of an enterprise hiring more than 30 labors (Article 11)
9)That the central labor authority shall budget for supplemental funds for litigation fees and living expenses as a result of unlawful mass layoff (Article 14)
10)That the central labor authority shall set up an evaluation council to gather and evaluate information involving causes of mass layoff by enterprises, and the result shall be served as the ground for drawing up the enterprise and employment policy (Article 15)
11)That the enterprise's chairman of the board or its actual responsible person shall be banned from leaving the country under certain circumstances, in case mass layoff place and pension, severance pay and wages in back pay (Article 12)
12)That enterprises shall not mass layoff by virtue of race, language, ideology, religion, political party, birth place, gender, appearance, mental and physical disability, age and serving on the labor union (Article 13)
13)To impose fines on enterprises for failing to submit the layoff proposal before the time limit to the labor authority, and administrative agencies or personnel concerned (Article 17)
14)To impose fines on enterprises for refusing to negotiate the layoff proposal with labors, refusing to assign negotiation representatives to the negotiation council, or failing to inform all labors electing their representatives, or refusing the employment services personnel to be stationed in the enterprise after forming the negotiation council, or randomly transferring or laying off employees during the prior notice period of mass layoff (Article 18)
15)To impose fines on an enterprise hiring over 30 labors, for failing to specify, or failing to provide balance sheet and related information after the labor authority having been informed of the enterprise¡¦s grave management troubles and coming to the enterprise for probing (Article 19)
16)That this law shall take effect three months later after the promulgation (Article 21)(21 provisions, p.1-6).