金名祖食品有限公司

None

1. During the pneumonia pandemic, wages were cut without warning for several months, leaving employees to find out only on payday that they could not pay that month’s bills. Employees were also not allowed to receive salary advances, showing complete disregard for their livelihoods.

2. Employees were not allowed to use the restroom during work hours. The owner and the owner’s spouse did not drink water or use the restroom themselves, and expected employees to similarly disregard their health for the sake of those few minutes of work time.

3. Workplace bullying was a serious problem. The owner liked to speak ill of others and regarded humiliating people as heroic deeds. The owner often said that they dared to scold so-and-so, casually insulted other people’s immediate family members, and even publicly humiliated their mother-in-law, whom they had helped without compensation.

4. If you cannot read minds, do not come. The owner disliked explaining upcoming work, but employees were scolded for not preparing because they did not know what was expected. Asking the owner for clarification in the same situation also resulted in being scolded. The owner even once said, “No one explains work that clearly.” Alternatively, the owner would quietly tell only certain employees and then reprimand those who had not been informed by saying, “I said it so loudly—how did you not hear?”

5. Employees had no hope of saving money. The owner often spoke ill of employees who had been there since the factory was founded, calling their desire for a share of the profits “an evil idea.” The owner believed that long-serving employees at other factories spending their whole lives earning low wages was behavior worthy of praise, and once said, “Employees are supposed to be cheap and useful,” clearly expecting employees to work like horses while refusing to feed them. Even when the company had a surplus, year-end bonuses were less than half a month’s wages. The owner also once said, “You chose employment; I chose entrepreneurship,” claiming that employees deserved to earn little. However, traditional peanut candy absolutely cannot be made by one person alone, so someone in this industry has no standing to say such things.

6. Safety awareness was poor, and there was no sense of responsibility for employees’ well-being. The owner often mentioned a former employee cutting their hand and said, “I didn’t tell him to cut it.” The factory and warehouse were packed with flammable materials such as liquor and cardboard boxes, and there were sources of fire inside the factory, yet no fire-extinguishing equipment had been purchased. The passageways were so crowded that only one person could pass through at a time.

7. During work-related conversations, the owner often suddenly brought up unpleasant past incidents (such as being criticized by friends while playing mahjong because they smelled of peanuts), then lost their temper, assuming that employees were speaking ill of them behind their back and repeatedly using sarcastic verbal interrogations about things that had never happened.

8. Working hours were irregular and opaque; employees almost always found out only on the day before whether they had to work the next day. During holiday seasons, employees often worked continuously for more than a month, with no overtime pay, additional compensation, or compensatory leave. During the off-season, the owner ostensibly called it letting employees rest, but in reality simply did not want to produce too much inventory because business was poor, so the factory did not operate, and the owner used this situation to emotionally blackmail employees.

9. Factory operations were unstable. Only the owner knew all the processes, and only the owner knew the proportions and heat control required to boil maltose. Whenever the owner was absent from the factory, it was impossible to produce even a single piece of traditional peanut candy.

10. The method of teaching techniques was terrible. The owner would only say, “It’s all about ‘technique’” (just those two words, nothing more). If employees asked about details of the movements or other specifics, they were ignored. The next time they performed the same task, they would be scolded for not being able to do it, and the owner would claim to have already taught them everything.

11. Regional discrimination: the owner was unwilling to give apprentices born outside Kinmen opportunities to learn and would think of every possible way to prevent non-Kinmen apprentices from handling the maltose-boiling process, while always recruiting under the slogan, “I’ll pass on the tradition and teach you the skills.”