Reference.......
10
Mr. Stewart.
Hong Kong Department.
I have already commented on the more technical aspects of this legislation in my minute of 20 January and I subsequently presented these and other arguments to the Labour Commissioner and also to the Governor during my visit to Hong Kong in February. I can find no evidence that this advice was ever presented to the Labour Advisory Board (on which the trade union side is filled by a number of ineffective yes-men) or discussed effective- ly within the Secretariat and with the Attorney General who seems to have been the main architect of this piece of legislation. I am sorry about the delay in dealing with these papers but I could gain little enthusiasm for repeating from London arguments already presented on the spot and, as is not unusual in Hong Kong, disregarded.
2.
We were informed on 1 October 1960 (Hong Kong Savingram No.2081) that they intended to review their essential services legislation.
Nine years
later we are presented with this ill-designed amendment to existing legislation, which is by their own admission ineffective. When Legislative Council was addressed on 20 December 1967 by the Commissioner of Labour, legislation was promised which would replace the existing Ordinance and "which would balance on the one hand the protection of the public interest from strikes and lockouts of a coercive nature in services where a stoppage of work would have an immediate and serious effect upon the life and health of the community and, on the other hand, the protection of the interests of those involved in genuine trade disputes in these services". It is in this latter respect that thelegislation is strangely silent. Restrictions on strike action are tightened up but there is no attempt to meet the principles which were set out in the Secretary of State for the Colonies' despatch on essential services legislation, which issued in 1949, and was subsequently amended by circular despatch No.629/60 of 12 June, 1960, i.e.
(a) an obligation on the employer in an essential
service to inform his employees through notices, of their obligations under the legislation;
(b)
protection of the right of collective withdrawal of labour where due notice is
given in accordance with the individual contract of service;
(c)
effective means for the settlement of disputes.
3.
I have placed a draft saving despatch opposite for consideration.
(G. Foggon)
Overseas Labour Adviser
10 May, 1969.