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the perseverence of Mrs Cheung and Miss So and agreed that in his view whey had a good deal of justice on their side. Mr Hegarty added that, because of the dispute, those members of SATA who had not accepted the new conditions of service had, for the present at least, forfeited back-pay totalling some HK$4,000.
8. Miss So informed Lord Goronwy-Roberts that she had seen a copy of the ster's letter to Mr Frank Hooley MP explaining the reasons put forward by the Hong Kong Government as to why the appoint.. ment of an independent arbitrator was not an acceptable idea.
Miss So, however, was very much in favour of this as a means to resolving the dispute. Lord Goronwy-Roberts expanded on the argument contained in the letter to Mr Hooley. The idea of appointing an independent arbitrator had been attractive to him and it was at his request that the suggestion was made to the Hong Kong Government. They, however, felt it inappropriate at a moment when discussions were about to start with public service unions on establishing machinery covering disputes in the whole of the public sector. The setting up of such machinery Lord Goronwy-Roberts believed to be important and he had therefore accepted the views of the Hong Kong Government.
9. He went on to explain that HMG had no right to direct the Hong Kong Government on internal affairs and he therefore could give no immediate answer to Mrs Cheung and Miss So. Lord Goronwy-Roberts explained that he too had considerable sympathy with their case but at the same time could understand the reluctance of the Hong Kong
Never- Government to get involved with a special case at this stage. theless, without commitment, Lord Goronwy-Roberts agreed to look into the case again. In particular, he would investigate how it was that members of the shorthand and audio typists grade appeared to be worse off after restructuring and what could be done about the worsening of their career prospects.
10. Mr Pendry felt that there was a danger of inordinate delay in settling thir dispute if nothing was to be done until machinery for
Lord Goronwy- the whole public service had been brought into action. Roberts axed whether we had any indication as to how long this
Mr Hegarty could take and Mr Thompson explained that we did not. believ that some of the delay, which was almost inevitable, could well be due to disagreements between and within the Civil Service Unions in Hong Kong. Lord Goronwy-Roberts accepted this as a very fa point but whatever the reason for the delay on the wider issue agreed that there was a need to try to get some settlement of this dispute as soon as possible. He asked whether this dispute, involving about 400 people, was an isolated one. Mr Hegarty confirmed that this was so because the root cause was the introduction of equal pay and the shorthand and audio typists grade was the only one which had no male equivalent and had therefore lost out in terms of their relativity to other grades. Lord Goronwy-Roberts asked if returning
All to the earlier relativity would satisfy the members of SATA.
Mr Thompson pointed prent confirmed that this would be the case.
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out vant 1971 Salaries Concession had taken into account the effects on pay relativities of the introduction of equal pay when studying a new salary scale for the shorthand and audio typists grade.
/11. Lord
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