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Nurses protest working conditions on
Nurses¡¦ Day
By Lee I-chia and Loa Iok-sin / Staff reporters
Nurses shout slogans in a protest
in front of the Department of Health in Taipei yesterday, urging authorities to
immediately change labor laws to prevent hospitals from further exploiting them.
Photo: CNA
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.
People¡¦s Front for Democracy director Chou Chia-chun (©P¨Î§g) said hospitals put
their nurses on one of three eight-hour shifts a day ¡X a day shift from 8am to
4pm, an evening shift from 4pm to 12am and a night shift from 12am to 8am ¡X 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 ¡X I only have one day in between to adjust,¡¨
said Chen Yi-chun (³¯©y§g), one of the nurses in the demonstration.
Taiwan Radical Nurses Union member Liang Hsiu-mei (±ç¨q¬Ü) said that among the 586
shift schedules the union has collected from nurses across the country ¡X
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
(³Ò°Ê°ò·Çªk), but the council shifted the responsibility for dealing with the shift
arrangements back to the DOH, union member Chen Yu-feng (³¯¥É»ñ) said.
¡§The department stands with the nurses on their demand for reasonable working
hours and sufficient rest,¡¨ DOH spokesperson Wang Che-chao (¤ýõ¶W) 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 (¤ý¤ªºü) 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 (§d) 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.
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