Hong Kong’s largest public healthcare workers union opts to dissolve as journalism group lowers vote threshold for disbandment
- Former chairman of Hospital Authority Employees Alliance confirms group voted to disband after special general meeting
- Hong Kong Journalists Association head says organisation has no plan to disband but amendment will give group ‘flexibility’
Hong Kong’s largest public healthcare workers union, which organised a strike to demand the authorities close the border with mainland China in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak two years ago, has decided to disband.
The decision by the opposition-leaning Hospital Authority Employees Alliance came as the city’s largest journalists’ association opted to reduce the voting threshold for disbandment, making it easier for the group, which has faced scrutiny by authorities, to dissolve itself if it wished to.
Former alliance chairman David Chan Kwok-shing on Saturday told the Post that members of the union voted to disband during a special general meeting last Friday.
The union for medical workers, which emerged from the anti-government protest movement in 2019, has become the latest opposition group to disband since Beijing imposed the national security law in 2020.
The group launched a strike in 2020 and about 7,000 medical staff asked authorities to close the border with the mainland.
