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.
FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION: The UK would continue to reinforce ties with Taiwan ‘in a wide range of areas’ as a part of a ‘strong unofficial relationship,’ a paper said The UK plans to conduct more freedom of navigation operations in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs David Lammy told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. British Member of Parliament Desmond Swayne said that the Royal Navy’s HMS Spey had passed through the Taiwan Strait “in pursuit of vital international freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.” Swayne asked Lammy whether he agreed that it was “proper and lawful” to do so, and if the UK would continue to carry out similar operations. Lammy replied “yes” to both questions. The
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
RSS