Health care worker union to launch general strike on Thursday

The Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union announced on Saturday that it agreed to launch a general strike starting Thursday. The decision came after health workers' discontent over measures by hospitals, which include furloughs and unpaid leaves.

A medical professional enters the national medical center in central Seoul on Sunday. Health care workers at the center are expected to join a general strike starting Thursday if their representative, the Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union, fails to reach a labor settlement with the employers. [NEWS1]

The Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union announced on Saturday that it agreed to launch a general strike starting Thursday.

The strike decision came after health workers' discontent over emergency measures taken by hospitals in to response to falling revenues, which include furloughs, unpaid leaves and extra shifts.

Approximately 91 percent of 24,257 respondents or health workers from 61 hospitals nationwide voted in favor of the strike. Of 29,705 eligible voters, some 5,448 members abstained from casting their ballots in the five-day voting that ended Friday.

The voting represented the voices of nurses, nursing assistants, medical technicians and care workers from 31 public and 30 private general and mid-sized hospitals, mostly with hundreds of patient beds.

Health care workers from tertiary hospitals managed by Korea University Medicine, Ewha Womans University Medical Center, Chung-Ang University Healthcare System and Hanyang University Medical Center also participated in the voting, and those hospitals are likely to be impacted by the planned strike.

The union said the high voter turnout and their endorsement to strike demonstrated “desperate calls from workers who invested and dedicated themselves to health services when the medical vacuum has continued over six months.”

The labor union demanded that their employers accept 10 demands, which included swift normalization of medical services, clarification of their work scope, prohibition of illegal medical treatments, piloting a four-day workweek and a 6.4 percent pay raise.

After direct negotiations with employers failed, the union filed an arbitration request with the National Labor Relations Commission and the Regional Labor Relations Commissions on Aug. 13.

A press release the union issued on Saturday said the "general strike will begin at 7 a.m. Thursday if the employers ignore the members’ fair demand." It also promised its “effort until Wednesday when the arbitration period expires.”

The union said essential health workers in emergency medicine, delivery rooms, neonatal units and operating rooms will continue their duties because their responsibilities are directly linked to patients’ lives.

The union urged employers “not to shift responsibility for the management crisis to the health workers” as the problem is a consequence of the “medical vacuum that has continued for over six months.”

It also said the workers had to “sacrifice and tolerate abuses such as forced unpaid leave, resignations and relocations in the name of hospitals’ emergency business management.”

According to a June report from Yonhap News Agency, 35 out of 47 state-owned and private hospitals training junior doctors declared their “emergency business management plan” to cut expenses. This move came in the wake of falling hospital since junior doctors began striking and resigning in February, forcing hospitals to admit fewer patients.

The union asked the employers to “negotiate earnestly and in good faith with laborers exhausted by the intense workload.” It also called for the government to provide “policy and financial solutions which can correct the distorted medical system and save public, essential and regional health services.”

BY LEE SOO-JUNG [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]