Protests against Taiwan’s labor law amendments are wide off the mark — Taiwan needs to fundamentally rethink its calendar.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/01/14
By: Morley James Weston
There aren’t even proper names for days of the week here; who would cry if we cut one off?
Recent Labor Standards Act (LSA) revisions have rendered Taiwan’s workweek all but
Photo Credit: AP/達志影像
irrelevant to shift workers, replaced with the potential for a convoluted fortnightly work cycle that has managed to anger just about everybody in the country.
But the seven-day week has no authentic connection to Taiwan. Seven-day weeks have been around since the Babylonians were a regional soft power, approximately corresponding to the lunar cycle. Originally used to organize market days and make babies, the lunar cycle is completely irrelevant to modern Taiwanese life, hidden under a thick matrix of skyscrapers and clouds and replaced by convenience stores and alarm clocks. What’s the phase of the moon right now? I don’t know either.
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