Taking patients hostage hurts us all

The Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union starts a two-day strike from Thursday. If its request is not met, it plans to continue the strike indefinitely. Though the union said essential staffers will remain at emergency rooms and operating rooms, there are no clear guidelines for other wards, including for outpatients.

Some hospitals already sent some of their patients home. The National Cancer Center (NCC) in Seoul canceled surgeries scheduled for Thursday and Friday, leaving open only 180 beds out of 500. The NCC cautioned against the possibility of reservations being delayed for those two days.

The union’s demands are not entirely wrong. Nurses, who take up 60 percent of its unionized members, are suffering from the high labor intensity. The government also accepts it. Despite the rapid improvement in the working environment for other areas, slow progress was made in the medical field. A critical lack of manpower even triggered a conflict among nurses, and an increasing number of nurses are quitting or leaving their hospitals for better treatment at other hospitals, including overseas.

The union claims that the government did not keep the promise the former administration had made to improve their treatment in September 2021. At that time, the liberal administration announced the agreement just five hours before the union was to enter a strike. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, under the conservative administration, pledged to succeed the earlier agreement with the union, but no noticeable progress has been made.

Nevertheless, taking people’s health hostage doesn’t make sense. The union must behave in a prudent and mature way to prevent patients’ conditions from getting worse as they can’t have their surgery on time. At the same time, the government must talk with the union over realistic solutions to resolve the situation.

The metalworkers’ union under the combative Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) also started a general strike from Wednesday. After union members of large companies, including Hyundai Motor, joined the strike, it will critically affect production. The metalworkers’ union came up with political slogans such as the withdrawal of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration and opposition to Tokyo’s plan to discharge the wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific.

Their outdated catchphrases will only fuel conflict in our society. The government also must have a sincere dialogue with the union. But it must sternly deal with the umbrella union if it goes overboard.