Holding placards and chanting slogans, about 200 nurses from across the country protested outside the Department of Health (DOH) in Taipei on International Nurses’ Day yesterday, calling for changes in work conditions, including what they call a “twisted” shift system.
“Only when nurses have rested well can patients’ safety be guaranteed. Give me normal work hours. Give me a normal work schedule,” nurses chanted as they demonstrated in uniform outside the DOH.
After chanting the slogans, protesters threw work schedules at the DOH building.
Photo: CNA
People’s Front for Democracy director Chou Chia-chun (周佳君) said hospitals put their nurses on one of three eight-hour shifts a day — a day shift from 8am to 4pm, an evening shift from 4pm to 12am and a night shift from 12am to 8am — but sometimes changes between different shifts leave the nurses with less than eight hours of rest time.
“I began my shift at midnight today, and got off work at 8am, but tomorrow, I’m on the day shift that starts at 8am — I only have one day in between to adjust,” said Chen Yi-chun (陳宜君), one of the nurses in the demonstration.
Taiwan Radical Nurses Union member Liang Hsiu-mei (梁秀眉) said that among the 586 shift schedules the union has collected from nurses across the country — including from university hospitals, municipal hospitals, medical centers and care centers, one-third of the schedules showed at least two different shifts every week.
“This means that the nurses have to reverse their circadian rhythms every two or three days, and suffer from sleep pattern disruption or insufficient sleep,” she said, adding that one of the worst schedules is when the night shift is followed by the day shift, because with forced overtime, the nurses get less than eight hours of rest before their next shift.
The union protested at the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) late last month, demanding reasonable labor conditions protected by the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), but the council shifted the responsibility for dealing with the shift arrangements back to the DOH, union member Chen Yu-feng (陳玉鳳) said.
“The department stands with the nurses on their demand for reasonable working hours and sufficient rest,” DOH spokesperson Wang Che-chao (王哲超) said, adding that the department will also discuss the criteria of hospital evaluations to include “labor inspection.”
The department will also negotiate with the CLA as soon as possible and discuss the actual working conditions with nurses, Wang added.
His words sparked an uproar from the crowd, who said the evaluations were often done falsely and that the two agencies are still passing the buck.
“It’s not about money, we want our lives, we want to take days off,” union member Wang Yun-hsu (王云緒) said, adding that solving the problem of disordered shift arrangements would go some way to alleviating the national problem of nursing shortages.
A nurse surnamed Wu (吳) said that the NT$2 billion (US$68.11 million) promised by the government to improve nurses’ working conditions and hire more resident nurses is not helpful to the nurses because the hospitals force them to sign contracts binding them to continue working for at least one or two years, with a substantial penalty for breach of contract.
“Wouldn’t it be better for the patients if the labor conditions were reasonable, so that nurses can continue working for many years and gain more experience, instead of burning out new nurses in a couple years and forcing them to leave because of poor health conditions caused by the heavy workload?” Wang Yun-hsu asked.
The union said it would stage a demonstration at the DOH again on June 12 if it did not come up with a satisfying solution to solve the poor labor conditions.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS