Solidarity with Nurses and Healthcare Workers Against 45-Hour Work Week!

Despite the opposition of several nursing groups and other healthcare workers’ associations, and although health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad had promised “to consider nurses’ feedback” and in fact met with some of them less than a week after the announcement to do just that, the new ruling nonetheless came into effect, as scheduled. We share the fury of all nurses and healthcare workers who have been forced into this regressive arrangement without so much as proper consultation.

According to free market healthcare mouthpiece CodeBlue’s review, “As healthcare workers are regulated by JPA together with other civil servants, due to the absence of a Health Service Commission, the MOH lacks the authority to change the new official 45-hour workweek” and can therefore only “ensure that nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers on shift duty actually get to take their one-hour breaks”. But then it quickly takes a hard swing toward this rather cynical conclusion: “This likely requires the closure of at least non-critical zones in the emergency department, wards, the intensive care unit, or operating theatres during break hours if there are insufficient staff—obviously impossible.”

While we fully agree with the government’s inability to do our healthcare workers justice, we certainly do not share a single shred of CodeBlue’s cynicism. To them, this inability is due to the inefficiency of public healthcare as opposed to private healthcare. To us, only through a working class perspective can such an absurd statement be effectively debunked. The government can never, and will never, treat our nurses and doctors fairly, so long as it remains pro-capitalist, not pro-worker.

This was the case in the BN-UMNO era, and so is it now with this “progressive” Madani state. So long as the capitalist economic system of general labor exploitation remains unchallenged, and so long as capitalist politics remains the order of the day, all public services, healthcare included, can never truly serve the public — laborers and consumers alike. Such humane ideas as fair wages for all healthcare workers and free healthcare for all human beings ultimately run counter to the logic of capitalism. Justice is contradictory to the capitalist profit motive, utterly incompatible with an economy based on the profits for the extreme few, rather than on the needs of the overwhelming many.

So it is precisely within the framework of capitalism that we have, as Hartal Doktor Kontrak succinctly puts it, “a healthcare system that neglects its workers [and] cannot effectively serve its people”. This is especially the case during this neoliberal era when the capitalist class has run out of things to commodify and has no choice but to turn to public goods and services. As the private healthcare industry drains away more of our public resources (for example via tax relief), the burden of maintaining what remains of public healthcare falls disproportionately on underfunded public hospitals and their overworked staff, who are forced to work more for less. On the flip side, access to healthcare becomes a race to the bottom for the majority of patients, who are similarly forced to spend more for less.

In this light, the imposition of this additional workload on nurses under the SSPA ruling is not an isolated incident but a symptom of a broader trend toward austerity and privatization in Malaysia’s public healthcare system. It is a direct consequence of the capitalist drive to cut costs and maximize profits at the expense of workers and the public.

We must also highlight the gendered nature of this neoliberal attack. Nursing remains a heavily feminized profession, and policies like the SSPA ruling disproportionately affect women, many of whom are already juggling the double burden of professional and domestic responsibilities. By further exploiting nurses’ labor and dismissing their calls for fairness, the capitalist state reinforces systemic gender inequality under the guise of administrative reforms.

Yet this struggle is far from hopeless. Across the world, healthcare workers have shown the power of organized struggle. Among many such inspiring displays of courage and conviction, the nurses’ strikes in the UK, the US, and New Zealand in recent years have forced governments to reverse cuts, improve pay, and address staffing shortages. These victories are a testament to the strength of collective action and solidarity among workers.

In this spirit, we stand with Hartal Doktor Kontrak and all healthcare workers in calling for the immediate reversal of the SSPA ruling, and for direct engagement with nurses and other healthcare staff on their working conditions—without delay. In addition, we support the establishment of a Health Service Commission to grant healthcare workers greater autonomy and representation, coupled with a significant increase in public investment in the healthcare system. More importantly, we call for the establishment of robust democratic structures within public hospitals and clinics to ensure that healthcare workers have direct control over their working conditions and the allocation of resources.

However, the ultimate solution lies beyond these immediate demands. As socialists, we recognize that a just and equitable healthcare system is incompatible with capitalism. We must fight for a system where healthcare is treated as a necessity, not a commodity; where workers are empowered, not exploited; and where the needs of the many outweigh the greed of the few. To accomplish this, complete democratic workers’ control of the national healthcare system must be our overarching imperative.

Above all, this resistance must eventually be tied to the broader working class struggle against the stranglehold of neoliberal austerity policies. We therefore call on all workers, unions, and youth organizations to unite in solidarity with nurses and healthcare workers, and to join this battle as part of the broader fight against capitalism. An injury to one is an injury to all!

Solidarity!