Report for EASRAC _ KHMU, Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union
1. What we have done in 2017
○ In 2017, the candlelight protest brought about the new administration, paving the way to clear out deep-rooted evils and asking for the social grand reform. Under the circumstances, the KHMU fought for ▲creating more healthcare jobs (job revolution) and ▲making a grand reform at the health sector(medical service revolution).
○ The KHMU has been struggling to reform Korea’s entire health and medical system with many problems: fierce competitions among medical institutions, profit-seeking hospital management, collapse of health service delivery system, and others.
2. Plan for 2018
○ The KHMU will conduct a campaign to revolutionize workplaces and healthcare system; and to create labor-respecting culture in hospitals.
○ The KHMU will conduct a so-called 4 OUT campaign, which clears out four bad practices: bullying, free labor, being certified by faking the real conditions in health facilities and irregular working positions.
○ The KHMU supports the new administration’s policy on extensive coverage of the national health insurance and we will continue the activities to enhance the public nature of health and medical services.
○ On the occasion of the local election taking place in June, the KHMU will ask the candidates to sign a policy agreement to improve the current medical policies.
3. Governance
○ The KHMU has been joining in the special committee on the health and medical sector that belongs to the Presidential Committee on Jobs. The KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions) determined to participate in the tripartite social dialogue body and discussions on separate sector-based committees are currently going on. In this context, the KHMU also has been asking for establishing a health sector specific committee.
○ The KHMU plans to have a 2018 central collective bargaining(national level negotiation) for health workers.
4. Unionization
○ The KHMU set up a unionization committee for non-unionized workers and assigned activists dedicated to unionization in 9 regions. This will be a starting point of the struggles to achieve a higher level of union density.
○ Starting from last year, the endeavor to unionize more workers has brought about a successful result in hospital workplaces.
○ Noteworthy is that SNS spaces including Kakaotalk have been fully made use of to organize young workers in particular. The KHMU installed a Health Workers 119 site on the Internet and has provided counseling to individual workers. This has led those workers to join in a trade union. In addition, we display paid advertisements at the cyber space.