Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries (TAVOI) activists and more than 20 labor unionists staged a demonstration in front of the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) yesterday, demanding the council include depression in its list of occupational injuries.
“We have handled many cases of work-related depression in recent years,” said Huang Hsiao-ling (黃小陵), secretary-general of the group. “Most of the cases were caused by work overload, unreasonable treatment, demands from a superior or worries over being laid off.”
About 20 to 30 workers on average each year believe their depression is job-related and seek help from the association, Huang said.
Chen Chiao-lien (陳巧蓮), a former employee at the Unitech Printed Circuit Board Corp was one of the workers with depression who went to the TAVOI for help.
Chen started working at the company in 1999, stayed as one of the top performers and was promoted to a lower-level management position.
However, 18 months later, Chen was removed from her management position because of quality control defects.
She was soon moved to a department in which she was often yelled at and humiliated by her superior.
Finally, she became severely depressed and was hospitalized twice because of her mental condition.
“Chen’s application to collect labor insurance payment was rejected because depression isn’t on the list of occupational injuries,” Huang said. “So we brought her with us to a protest last November, asking the CLA to include depression on the list.”
At the time, CLA officials said they would consider expanding the list, “and they did yesterday [Thursday], but depression is still not included,” Huang said.
The CLA publicized a new list of occupational injuries on Thursday that added 18 cancers and two types of surgical trauma — but not depression.
“Depression isn’t included in the new list because it’s difficult to tell if depression is really caused by work conditions,” Wu Hung-hsiang (吳宏翔), a CLA official who received the protesters said. “But just because we didn’t add it to the list this time doesn’t mean that it won’t be added in the future — we will study it further.”
The protesters were unhappy with the response.
“Putting depression on the list doesn’t mean that all workers with depression can automatically collect insurance payments,” Huang said.
“It just means that the council recognizes work conditions as a possible cause of depression. Each individual case will still need to be investigated and verified by a panel of experts,” Huang said.
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