Nearly seven out of every 10 Taiwanese employees polled were required to work rotating shifts, according to an online survey released by labor rights groups yesterday, which they said could increase females workers’ risk of breast cancer.
The poll was conducted between May 25 and Friday among 215 employees, the majority of whom worked in the medical industry (60 percent), followed by the manufacturing industry (13 percent) and semiconductor and electronics sector (9 percent).
“The results showed that about 66 percent of respondents have to work longer than eight hours a day and 5 percent even for more than 12 hours,” Taiwan Labor and Social Policy Research Association chief executive officer Chang Feng-yi (張烽益) told a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
Chang said that as many as 67 percent of those polled are required to work rotating shifts, with 72 percent of them having to rotate among three different shifts and 28 percent among two different shifts.
The poll also found that 73 percent of respondents believe that rotating shifts are severely detrimental to their family and social lives. Only 5 percent think it does not pose any problem.
Taiwan Occupational Safety and Health Link director-general Cheng Ya-wen (鄭雅文) said working rotating and night shifts has been categorized by an international organization as a potentially carcinogenic occupational factor because it disrupts the normal wake-sleep cycle and can alter the endocrine system.
“People subjected to such work schedules are particularly prone to sleep disorders, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. The impacts are even more adverse for women, who can also suffer infertility, an increased risk of miscarriage and a greater susceptibility to breast cancer,” Cheng said.
In addition to those adverse health effects, Cheng said people working night shifts are more prone to traffic accidents while commuting, urging the government to follow in the footsteps of the International Labour Office in promulgating night-work guidelines to protect workers from the potential harm of working rotating and inconsistent hours.
Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-liam (孫友聯) said that in 2013, the total working hours of an employee in Taiwan averaged 2,124 hours, making it the country with the third-longest work hours in the world.
“Compared with workers in other nations, those in the US worked an average of 1,788 hours per year, with people in Japan and Germany working average annual working hours of 1,735 and 1,388 hours respectively,” Son said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater