The Tainan City Education Industry Union today asked the Tainan City Government Education Bureau to follow the guidance of the Ministry of Education and other three cities, including Taichung, Taoyuan, and Kaohsiung, and implement teachers’ right to go offline. They should be paid for overtime work on holidays and can no longer cope with lack of budget. Teachers’ rights and interests should be ensured. Teachers’ Day should not be left with just slogans of thanks.
In response, the Education Bureau responded that it will study the "Guidelines for Teachers' Non-working Hours Contact and Emergency Matters Handling" to protect students' rights and communication needs with teachers through a reasonable and clear contact mechanism, while also ensuring teachers' reasonable rest during non-working hours.
The Education Bureau also mentioned that with the popularization of instant messaging tools, teacher-teacher and administrative contact have become more convenient, but the boundaries between work and rest time are easily blurred. Teachers should have a reasonable rest after completing their daily teaching and administrative duties, as well as family life time. Except when it involves student safety, major campus events, emergency disaster response, or other urgent matters, non-urgent teaching, administrative and parent-teacher contacts should in principle be handled during the teacher's working hours to avoid requiring teachers to respond or handle immediately during non-working hours.
The Tainan City Education Industry Union held a press conference today, demanding that the Education Bureau should implement a specific system to protect teachers’ right to rest and provide reasonable compensation for working on holidays. Councilors Wang Jiazhen, Zhu Zhengxuan, Lin Guanwei, Cai Xiaowei, as well as council candidates Hsu Youren, Shen Zhennan and others were present to speak out for teachers’ rights.
Chen Weiyun, chairman of the Tainan City Education Industry Union, pointed out that teachers now often receive administrative notices, online reports, temporary assignments and parent messages after get off work. During holidays, they may be required to participate in school celebrations, class meetings, enrollment, competitions, studies, camps, student leadership, or handle emergencies. Teachers continue to contribute to their work during non-working hours, but educational administration agencies often take these extra contributions for granted.
The union also advocates that schools should not force teachers to disclose their private phone numbers, join parent communication groups, or require teachers to deal with non-urgent matters immediately at night, late at night, or on holidays. Chen Weiyun said that teachers are willing to devote themselves to students, but that does not mean that teachers must be on call 24 hours a day. Currently, teachers who work on regular holidays can only make up for their time off. Teachers often have to make up classes, adjust classes, and even pay for substitute classes on their own to make up for the rest, so they cannot get actual rest at all.
The Ministry of Education has sent a letter to local governments on June 17 this year to supervise the establishment of reasonable administrative contacts and teacher-teacher communication mechanisms in the schools under their jurisdiction. However, the municipal education bureau has not officially forwarded it so far, nor has it formulated city-wide unified guidelines for teachers’ offline rights. Many teachers have long been faced with the dual dilemma of "still having to deal with official duties after get off work, and being able to attend holidays but can only make up for their time off."
