CONFIDENTIAL
2 -
Fin David
Theuch:
living conditions here can never be crowned with substantial success if the behaviour of the very people they are trying to help provides a threat to the internal security and economic health of the community."
3. It is not unfair perhaps to comment that young people are unlikely to accept the premise that the major contribution to the improvement in werking conditions must come from a continuing growth in Hong Kong's economy and its corollary about investment, unless there is some evidence of a conscious drive on the part of the leadership of the Hong Kong Government and employers to ensure that the lower echelons of society
to which the bulk of the young people belong have an opportunity of sharing in the fruits of such growth. The slow tempo of improvement in labour standards in the past eight or nine years cannot have inspired much
confidence in this.
4. The Governor's announcement of steps to speed up the introduction of improved labour legislation and a start with social security studies, made at Kai Tak Airport on June 25th, was therefore timely and available evidence indicates that it was very well received, both in Hong
The Those proposed
1967 Kong and abroad.
This report is largely concerned with
these proposed improvements and with the problems of implementation. First among these is the staffing of
the Department of Labour, which has been made the subject of a separate note. It is sufficient to say here that the staffing of the Department of Labour bears little relation to its responsibilities at this stage of Hong Kong's industrial and social evolution, and indeed bears all the deficiency characteristics to be expected of the low priority it has so far enjoyed in the governmental scale of departmental values.
Hours of Work of Women and Young Persons
5. There are no statutory restrictions on the hours of work of male workers over the age of eighteen years, but there has been a consistent effort since 1959, when
the maximum hours of work of women and young persons were
reduced from twelve to ten a day for six days a week, to reduce further the permitted maximum for this class of worker to eight hours a day.
It had been assumed in
CONFIDENTIAL
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