Hong Kong’s despicable hospital strike over coronavirus crisis is just a taste of more to come
- Yonden Lhatoo condemns public hospital workers for abandoning their patients for the sake of politics, and warns of more disruptions by unionised anti-government activists in the year ahead.
So our public hospital workers have called off their great strike after holding this city’s health care services hostage for five days.
It was ostensibly aimed at forcing an inept and indecisive administration to order a total closure of Hong Kong’s borders in the hope of shutting out the dreaded new coronavirus from mainland China.
The Hospital Authority Employees Alliance is one of the numerous activist groups that were born in the bonfires of the “revolution of our times”, set up with the express purpose of keeping the protest movement alive through collective action in their respective fields whenever opportunity knocks.
While the union does not represent the bulk of medical professionals in this city, who crossed picket lines to continue saving patients’ lives, it still made a significant impact on public health care services with a couple of thousand nurses and a few hundred doctors staying away from work.
