Childcare Workers Push Back Against New Surveillance Regulations
Care work becomes harder to professionalize when every institutional failure is answered with more surveillance of the lowest-paid adults in the room.
English
Photo Credit: WC-QHS/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
CHILDCARE WORKERS have suggested that they may strike over new regulations that require the uploading of surveillance footage from infant daycare centers to cloud storage.
The attempt to roll out this new requirement seems to be in response to concerns about potential child abuse. Likewise, it is increasingly the case that parents wish to view footage of their children in daycare facilities, so that they are able to check on them while at work.
Nevertheless, childcare workers have raised privacy concerns for not only themselves but also the children. Concerns have been raised about the recording of when children are being fed or changing. Likewise, concerns have been raised about how the footage will be stored, who can access it, and whether its storage will take place in a secure environment.
For its part, Social and Family Affairs Administration Director-General Chou Tao-chun stated that the new system is still being planned. To this extent, the government has stated that it does not intend to livestream footage, in that this will not be live footage that government officials are able to watch, and that private areas, as changing areas or diaper changing areas, will not be recorded.
At the same time, controversy regarding the undue oversight of educators is not a new issue in Taiwan. In late January, educators pushed back against practices on campuses criticized as leading to the bullying and targeting of teachers. Specifically, the practice of the campus incident meeting has been singled out as leading teachers to be targeted by students. As such, more than one thousand teachers participated in a demonstration outside of the Ministry of Education against the practice of “campus incident meetings.”
The practice is one intended as a corrective to the frequently recurring issue of teacher bullying of students in Taiwan. However, the system was criticized as used to target teachers unfairly.
Incidents highlighted included when a teacher was threatened with dismissal on grounds of bullying and emotionally abusing students for asking a student to be more stringent about classroom cleaning. Another incident brought up was when a teacher faced an investigation after taking a painkiller, forcing her to hide when she ate or drank afterward.
Such investigations were criticized as a waste of administrative resources, as well as frequently conducted by inexperienced personnel.
Indeed, the campus incident meeting may be a response to that cases of teachers bullying students frequently make national news. Likewise, corporal punishment remains widespread, in spite of high-profile incidents that have resulted in death or permanent injury.
But, on the other hand, it can also be the case that educators end up being subject to undue oversight. It is to be seen how to find a balance that protects the rights of both educators and teachers.