HB 18/2
Downing Street,
18 April, 1958.
30
16
I am now able to let you have my further comments on the representation by Mr. Burn enclosed with your letter of 13 November.
To correct a possible misapprehension, I ought straightaway to explain that this is not, as your letter suggest, a case of a firm meeting difficulties in prolonged attempts to clarify its position. It is a case rather, of the firm's unwillingness to recognise the difficulties which make it impossible for the Hong Kong Government to agree to contracts for the employment of alien Chinese workers in this country being made more favourable to the employer, so far as passage expenses to and from this country are concerned.
Mr. Burn himself says that his only difficulty is over the question of passages, and by this we understand him to be referring to the employers' liability, under contracts attested by the Commissioner or Labour, to pay the alien workers' passages back to Hong Kong, in part at least, as well as to this country. He is particularly aggrieved that the employer should have to meet the passage costs to the UK in cases where the worker walks out or terminates his employment without working the full period
MRS. M. L. JEGER, MP.
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