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One of the top stories from this past week was that flight attendants from Taiwan’s China Airlines went on strike for the first time in history. The strike began at midnight on Thursday night going into Friday morning. All of the airline’s flights leaving from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Songshan Airport, both serving Taipei, were cancelled.
Some 20,000 travelers were affected on the first day alone. The airline and the flight attendants reached a deal on Saturday to end the strike.
The end of the strike came after China Airlines announced it would drop an unpopular policy requiring flight attendants departing from the Taipei area to report for work at Taoyuan Airport rather than Songshan Airport, closer to Taipei’s city center. After negotiations Friday night, the airline also reached a consensus with the Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union on overtime, holiday guarantees, and subsidies for flight attendants assigned to work overseas.
The Civil Aeronautics Administration has asked the airline to speed up efforts to resume services. Striking flight attendants plan to return to work on Monday, but China Airlines says that most flights scheduled to depart after 5:00pm on Saturday will operate normally.
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Also this past week, Beijing announced that the cross-strait communication mechanism had been suspended.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office made the announcement on Saturday. The announcement came after 25 Taiwanese nationals were sent from Cambodia to China on Friday to face charges of telecom fraud. Beijing rebuffed protests from Taipei, saying that cross-strait communications have been cut off since President Tsai Ing-wen took office on May 20.
Beijing has repeatedly insisted that Tsai accept the 1992 Consensus. Under that consensus, the two sides agree that both belong to one China, each allowing the other to hold its own interpretation of what “one China” means. So far, Tsai has only acknowledged that the two sides reached an agreement in 1992, but she has not responded to pressure to accept the consensus herself.
Beijing has made it clear that it views acceptance of the 1992 Consensus as a prerequisite for continued cross-strait ties. But Saturday’s announcement marks the first time Chinese authorities have said that cross-strait communications have been suspended.
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And finally, this past week, Premier Lin Chuan says the government is closely monitoring how the UK’s vote to leave the European Union will affect Taiwan’s financial market.
Shares in Taiwan took a beating on Friday as investors scrambled to dump their holdings in the wake of the referendum results. Shares in Taiwan closed down 199.69 points, or 2.30 percent, at 8,476.99 on Friday.
Lin said the government could consider activating the national stabilization fund to ease public anxiety though it would be better not to do so.
Lin also said it will be a formidable challenge for the government to keep Taiwan’s GDP growth above 1% this year.