Sixty percent of workers in Taiwan have suffered occupational injuries or illnesses, causing 47 percent of the injured workers to quit their job, according to a survey released yesterday by the online 1111 Job Bank 1111, ahead of International Workers’ Day today.
The poll showed that out of the 60 percent of self-reported respondents who suffered work-related injuries or illnesses, 30 percent sustained permanent injuries, while 39.65 percent were still receiving medical treatment or undergoing rehabilitation, but expected to make a full recovery.
The poll showed that 31.28 percent of occupational accidents occurred in old-economy businesses or manufacturing.
Up to 64 percent of respondents who suffered occupational injuries or illnesses said they received no assistance other than that prescribed by the law, while 16.74 percent said they took advantage of an employer-sponsored group health insurance plan.
Only 14.54 percent of employers took an interest in injured or ill employees, or visited them, while 8.37 percent of employees were granted a period of paid recuperation.
The poll showed that 47 percent left their job after an occupational injury, including 32.16 percent who quit voluntarily, 8.37 percent who were forced to leave and 6.61 percent who resigned because they could no longer perform the job.
The online poll was conducted from April 12 to Friday last week among the job bank’s 1,128 members aged 18 and older. It has a confidence level of 95 percent and an error margin of 2.92 percentage points.
According to a survey released by the online job bank yes123 on Monday last week, office workers in Taiwan work an average of 9.1 hours a day, a slight increase from the nine hours shown in a similar poll conducted last year.
The poll showed that 37.8 percent of respondents said their work hours were too long, while 60.9 percent were satisfied with their work hours.
On average, respondents said that an ideal work day of 7.6 hours would allow them to strike a better work-life balance.
More than 43 percent said they had been asked to work overtime hours, while more than 52 percent had worked overtime at night.
The poll showed that 60.3 percent of respondents do not turn off their mobile phones outside of work, and that 86.6 percent handle work-related matters on their phone after work hours and on weekends.
Respondents scored their levels of life happiness and well-being an average of 56.3 points on a 100-point scale, which was higher than the score in last year’s poll and the second-highest of the past five years, with the scores from 2014, 2015, 2016 and last year being 46.2, 47.7, 56.4 and 55.7 points, respectively.
The online yes123 poll, which was conducted from April 11 to Monday last week among job bank members aged 20 and above who were employed, collected 1,266 randomly selected valid samples, and has a margin of error of 2.75 percentage points.
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