Hospital union to vote on strike action on Saturday

Hospital union to vote on strike action on Saturday

A newly formed medical staff union said on Friday that they will vote on Saturday afternoon whether to go on a strike over their demand to enforce a full border closure to prevent an outbreak of coronavirus in Hong Kong.



The union said 6,700 workers of the Hospital Authority (HA) have pledged to go on strike if the government doesn’t enforce a full border closure. Most of them are nurses and doctors.



The HA Employees Alliance said most coronavirus patients in Hong Kong are from the mainland, and hospitals won’t be able to cope if the number of such cases keeps rising.



The group’s vice-chairman, Ivan Law, said healthcare personnel have very low morale as they feel they have not been provided with enough protective equipment.



He said people working in various hospitals have already adopted protest measures to try to get officials to listen to their plight.



"In different hospitals, there are some staff who organised themselves and launched some kind of strike like calling in sick collectively to pressure the Hospital Authority to reply to our demands," he said.



The alliance said as the first step of a strike, the employees who are exempted from going to work on typhoon days will not report to work on February 3.



The union said they will widen the strike further if the government fails to respond, but did not specify the steps they will take.