[Table 5 about here]
With the exception of Kaohsiung City
, when the regional federations of
democratic unions were formed, their jurisdictional counties and cities were governed
by the DPP, the opposition party at the time. According to Chang-ling Huang, “that
[these unions] could be established in spite of the central government’s disapproval
and that they also received subsidies from local governments show how union leaders
and labor activists took advantage of the political differences between the local
government and the central government.” (2002: 316)
The decentralized political process in democratic Taiwan, therefore, provided
wider institutional permeability to labor unions in articulating their interests and
achieving their goals and diminished the incentives to resort to militant mobilization.
10
Kaohsiung City had a KMT mayor at the time, but the DPP politicians threatened to freeze the city
budget in order to have the union federation established and recognized. Union leaders also warned the
KMT mayor that they would bring the issue to the upcoming election. Indeed, the establishment of the
Kaohsiung Federation of Industrial Unions was approved before the 1998 mayoral election (Interview
with Yuan-yen Ding, director of Kaohsiung Labor Bureau, 3 April 2003, Kaohsiung, Taiwan).
11
Until 1996 when the first direct presidential election was held in Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui of the KMT was
in charge of the government.
19
Convention