Under the existing rules, insured workers who choose to adopt the old retirement pension system can apply for voluntary retirement if they have turned 55 and served at the same company for 15 years, or have worked for the same employer for 25 years regardless of their age.

At the moment, most of those insured workers who rejoin the job market can hardly meet the existing criteria governing voluntary retirement, making it difficult for them to get retirement payment.

According to an estimate made by the Council of Labor Affairs, there are 1.09 million insured workers subject to the old retirement payment system, and some 90,000 of them will qualify for voluntary retirement immediately after the revised law is taken into practice.

Under the Labor Standards Law, there are two types of retirement. One is voluntary retirement and the other is mandatory one. In 2008, the Legislative Yuan ratified a set of revisions to the labor law, boosting the mandatory retirement age for the insured to 65 from 60, making insured workers who are approaching 60 postpone their retirement.

To counter these revisions, Lawmaker Hsu Chung-hsiung of the ruling Kuomintang raised a proposal to amend Article 53 of the Labor Standards Law to install an additional condition for voluntary retirement by insured workers, as mentioned above.