A Taiwanese lawmaker on Tuesday urged regulators to protect the employees of the Taiwan unit of troubled insurance giant American International Group (AIG) as the parent company solicits new bids for the subsidiary. 'Up to 4,070 employees have been punished and fired since Nan Shan Life Insurance Co. was put up for sale for the first time, ' opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pan Men-an said at a news conference, with Nan Shan's trade union leaders also present. 'There are many more who have been demoted and the number is still being counted,' he said. He urged Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) , the country's top financial regulator, to list the protection of employees' rights as one of the criteria in reviewing the planned sale of Nan Shan. Nan Shan spokeswoman Amanda Chou dismissed the allegation, saying that some of the employees left the company because they failed to pass performance evaluations. She put the insurer's current workforce at around 33,000. Chou also declined to comment on the timetable for the new sale after the local media reported that AIG had invited four potential Taiwan-based buyers to tender their bids by Dec. 3. The reported suitors are Cathay Financial Holding Co., Fubon Financial Holding Co., Chinatrust Financial Holding Co., and Ruentex Group. In a Nov. 5 statement, AIG said it believed a sale would be completed 'within 12 months.' A previous attempt by AIG to sell its Taiwan subsidiary ended in failure. Taiwan's regulators on Aug. 31 rejected the sale of the unit to a Hong Kong consortium comprising Primus Financial Holdings and China Strategic Holdings, on concerns related to the buyer's long-term financial capability and the rights of Nan Shan's workers. The consortium agreed in October 2009 to buy AIG's 97 percent stake in Nan Shan for US$2.15 billion after AIG put the Taiwanese insurer up for sale following a U.S. government bailout. Wedding Lan, a spokesman for Nan Shan's trade union and a former executive who was demoted to sales agent earlier this year for 'speaking to the press about Nan Shan without the prior consent of the company, ' urged new bidders at the press conference to strike a deal with the trade union over the protection of employees' rights. The trade union demanded, for example, that the new buyer should provide labor and health insurance and appropriate pension benefits to all Nan Shan employees and not just those staffing the company's offices, as is the case at present, according to Lan. 