Employees encouraged to take leave: Hsinchu Science Park
The Hsinchu Science Park, where major high-tech companies in Taiwan are located, announced yesterday that eight companies have been encouraging their employees to take annual leave in a bid to lower production amid slowing global demand.
However, none of the 460-plus firms in the industrial zone have, so far, forced their workers to take unpaid leave as many did during the financial crisis in 2008, according to the park administration.
The eight companies that are encouraging annual leave are in the foundry business, the light-emitting diode sector, the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) industry, the flat panel business and the solar energy business, according to a recent survey by the science park.
The employees of the eight firms are scheduling their annual leave, and such an arrangement is allowed under the local labor regulations since it will be paid leave, the administration said.
With Taiwan’s exports showing signs of a slowdown in reflection of weakening global demand, there have been fears that the domestic high-tech sector -- the backbone of the island’s exports -- will have to resort to involuntary furloughs to deal with the unfavorable market conditions.
The science park declined to disclose the names of the eight companies, but United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), the world’s second largest contract chip maker, said it is one of them and it is aiming to cut production to weather the current downturn in the global high tech sector.
Market analysts said UMC’s capacity utilization fell to around 70 percent in the third quarter of this year from 90 percent in the first quarter.
In September, UMC’s sales totaled NT$8.18 billion (US$269 million), down 0.29 percent from August and down 25.29 percent from a year earlier. The September figure was the lowest in 28 months.
In 2010, the Hsinchu Science Park generated NT$1.19 trillion in sales, with the semiconductor industry accounting for 68 percent of the total revenue, followed by the optoelectronics sector, the computer and peripheral business, the communications industry, the precision machinery sector and the biotech industry
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