33
71. A most important recent development in this connection has been
the establishment of the Labour Tribunals, the first of which was set
up in 1973 to provide a cheaper and less formal process for workers to
take action where their legal rights under employment contracts were
concerned than through the courts. In these Tribunals, procedure is
quite informal and no legal representation is permitted; employers and
workers speak for themselves, though a group may nominate one of its
members as spokesman. Officials of unions or employer organisations may
accompany the contestants as advisors; but I gather it is unusual for
this to occur.
The success of the Tribunal was such that two more have
since been established. But this development appears to have had no
effect on the numbers of such grievances settled by the Labour
Department itself, which have continued to increase:
Total cases settled
1971/2
1975
(major and minor grievances combined)
4161
5823
By:
Labour Tribunals
Labour Department
Legal Aid Department
Courts
0
1795
3297
3894
250
127
584
5
The main effect of the Tribunals has thus been to replace the courts as
channels for worker grievances, and to create an additional route for
their expression. But the great increase in the number of such
grievances handled by both them and the Labour Department itself is
significant of the failure of unions and direct management-employee
relationships in Hong Kong to provide such a channel. It is perhaps
also significant of the need for such grievance procedures that in the
last year of report, for instance (1975), Labour Tribunals found in
favour of the workers involved in 87% of cases they settled.
72. To repeat, just as in the case of such strikes as occur in
Hong Kong, the participation, much less leadership, of unions in these
various processes does not appear at all prominent.
VII
Some Conclusions
73. We have then (in summary) a situation in which there are good
social, economic and labour market reasons why an effective labour
/movement