KHMU INFO<11> November 28, 2014

President Yoo, Ji-Hyun Reelected with 93.7% Public Support: The First President Re-elected by the KHMU.

 

○ The Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union conducted a direct election, in which president Yoo was reelected.

 

○ Yoo, Ji-Hyun(President), Choi, Gwon-Jong(First Vice President) and Han, Mi-Jeong(General Secretary) filed as a team for the 7th leadership on October 15, 2014. This team was the sole candidate.

 

○ The voting took place throughout the nation from November 25 to 27 and 28,698 out of 41,056 members voted. Current leadership won a three-year term with 93.7% (26,896) support from members. For the first time in the KHMU history, the president was reelected, demonstrating strong union support of the current leadership's record over the last three years. Within the many unions affiliated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, rarely is a union president reelected. With this election result, the KHMU is expected to maintain stable executive leadership and to make another takeoff in the future.

 

○ During the election campaign, presidential candidate Yoo coined the slogan: “Yes! The very industry-based union that we have dreamt of.” Major pledges include: ▲a field worker-oriented, industry-based union, a KHMU united with union members ▲a KHMU that realizes the values of labor, an industry-based union that promotes people’s health ▲ an industry-based union that writes the future of workers, a KHMU that spearheads an industry-based union model. 

 

○ She also detailed her specific commitments to field workers’ needs such as sufficient staffing, improvement of the shift-work system, creation of a staffing standard in the health sector; and standard wages fixed at the industry level. In addition, she promised that she would make the union serve its fundamental roles, enhance the ability to respond to urgent issues, make negotiations with the government and industry employers more practical and meaningful, create an organizational culture that enables members to respect one another, guide Korea’s health and medical sector on the right track, expand the organization up to 100,000 members, innovate within society and politics, establish a health and medical policy research center, and provide a strategic roadmap for the future of the industry-based union.

 

○ On the night of November 27, when her reelection was almost certain, she shared a few words: “Due to extremely short staffing, we are in a rush to have meals and go to the rest room, and suffer from a lack of sleep. We also have to escape such a dire reality that even controls workers’ pregnancy timing to avoid situations, in which too many nurses are pregnant within the same time frame (Nurse-Pregnancy-Order-System).”

 

○ She also appealed to members: “Let’s stop the move toward health sector privatization and ensure a healthy life for every member of the society. Let’s make our society value life over money."

 

 

○ The 7^th leadership will start its official job on January 1, 2015 and continue to serve until the end of December, 2017.