With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers (HCWs) have dedicating to the care of sufferers, stop scheduling or canceling annual paid leave (APL). It's time to discuss APL which bears on the rights and interests of employees again, especially in healthcare industries. Most of HCWs decided to stay not leave in the epidemic,1 paid leave was linked to happiness and stress2; however, some results were based on a long-term stable circumstance, not pandemic outbreaks.
On Feb 23rd of 2020 Taiwan National Health Command Center announced travel restrictions on HCWs to other countries before Jun 30th 2020, which impacted their scheduled APL. This measure is contrary to Article 38 of Labor Standards Act (LSA) and the Constitution.
Paragraph 3, Article 38 of LSA stipulates that “Employers shall pay employees wages for the unused APL at the year-end settlement or upon the employment contract termination. For unused APL carried over to the next year according to the agreement reached by employers and workers, wages must be paid for those not used by workers at the end of the second year or upon the termination of contracts.”
Do HCWs hope to postpone unused APL settlement instead of being compensated in wages? While employers are concerned about a future shortage of labor because HCWs will take their unused APL before the start of a new settlement year or after COVID-19, thus the availability of labor is failing to serve all the patients.
We used real-named system to survey non-fixed term contract HCWs whether agree to postpone APL settlement instead of being compensated in wages from February 7th to 28th of 2020 or not. HCWs who had their settlement date of APL between February 1st and June 30th of 2020 at three medical university affiliated hospitals in Taiwan were enrolled into the survey.
48.8% (n = 2734) of HCWs whom have their settlement date of APL between February and June and 22.7% of whom agree to postpone unused APL settlement instead of being compensated in wages as stipulated by Paragraph 3, Article 38 of LSA (Table 1 ). Although the two sides can carry over the APL for one year according to Paragraph 3, given their date of availability and that the pandemic eases in the future, the employers shall still compensate the workers for unused APL in wages. APL contributes to reducing pressure and overwork and increasing happiness, the lack of vacation goes against the psychological recovery3 of post-COVID-19 workers. For employers, it will affect work arrangement. When employees can use APL for vacation or learning, self-actualization can be achieved4 , 5 and closely relevant to happiness and stress.2
Table 1.
On the use of annual paid leave for employees applicable according to the labor standards Act.
| Variables | Hospital Category |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | C | Mean | |
| Total Medical Beds | 1761 | 545 | 428 | |
| Total Employeesa | 3582 | 850 | 864 | |
| Number of Employees with APL Expiring between Feb. and July 2020b | 1844 | 353 | 385 | |
| Proportion of Employees with APL Expiring between Feb. and July 2020 to Total Hospital Staff | 51.5% | 41.5% | 44.56% | 48.8% |
| Average Days of APL Used by Employees with Expiration in the Month | 17.5 | 17.7 | 13.78 | |
| Rate of APL Used before Settlement Date | 42.0% | 87.3% | 76.2% | 52.5% |
| Number of Employees Agreeing on Carryover | 456 | 65 | 64 | |
| Share of Employees Agreeing on Carryover | 22% | 19% | 16% | 22.7% |
Not including visiting staff for inapplicability as per the definition of “a person who is hired by an employer to work for wages” according to the Labor Standards Act of Taiwan.
APL: Annual Paid Leave.
Authorities and employers should promote a more positive, flexible APL policy for securing the availability of labor. We should pay attention to the issue and relax the restrictions on one-year extension of APL before the next amendment of Labor Standards Act. The extension of any unused APL should, by agreement between workers and employers, not be subject to the one-year limit, and it is good for post COVID-19 recovery.
Funding
This work was not grant-funded.
Author contributions
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1.
Miss Chiao-Ling Wang: charged the survey at 1706-bed tertiary care hospital, designed, communicated with Information Service department for the web-based questionnaire, wrote the draft results.
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2.
Miss Chung-Yu Hung: charged the survey at 428-bed tertiary care hospital, and analyzed its result.
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3.
Miss Fang-Jiun Lin: charged the survey at 574-bed tertiary care hospital, and analyzed its result.
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4.
Mr. Shih-Huai Hsiao: coordinated, communicated with multidisciplinary team and all the resource at three hospitals, confirmed all technical knowledge, rewrote and correspond this survey and article.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.
Acknowledgment
We thank all members of the COVID-19 Response Team of KMU Healthcare System for implementing this survey, including Superintendent Professor Ming-Feng Hou, Professor Chow-Hung Kuo, and Professor Yen-Hsu Chen. Without data collected by Human Resource Departments at three medical university affiliated hospitals, this article could not be published. None of the staff members mentioned received any compensation for their contributions. We also express gratitude to all trustees of the Board of Kaohsiung Medical University Trustee for supporting us with a lot of resource to establish a healthy and safe workplace for healthcare workers.
References
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