Registry No.
DRAFT
LETTER
HWB 18/2
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
To:-
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted. Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
..In Confidence
Mrs. M.L. Jeger, M.P.,
House of Commons.
Fresh
Type 1 +
drafla phie,
From
Telephone No. & Ext.
Department
NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
In employer shot have is
meet
t
The 04.
W(B)L 51-7433
Lanage costs to
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 first of all to explain that this is not,
as your letter suggests, 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 of 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 this should
be required in cases where the worker walks out
or terminates his employment without working
the full period of the contract.
I will deal first with questions Mr. Burn
raises about the status of the "model contract"
issued by the Hong Kong Government for the
/guidance