12.
" the recommendations of the Committee of Inquiry will be adhered to
provided they are not unacceptable to both the Government and all the
Staff Associations concerned." (13)
One initial point about the SCSC is that its commitment to purely
consultative practices has not noticeably evolved in the direction of
negotiation since the Council's inception in 1968. Yet pressures for the
Government to adopt a 'collective bargaining posture have emanated from
external sources as well as the staff side.
.....
A protracted dispute over pay in the year following the Council's
establishment led to the convening of a Committee of inquiry in 1970.
Although the Government accepted its findings on the pay issue, a
recommendation that "genuine powers of negotiation" on both the staff
and official sides of the SCSC was declared by the Government to be
ultra vires and unacceptable (14).
At least two of the main staff associations have maintained a fairly
constant preference for negotiation rather than consultation, since the
purely consultative mandate possessed by the official side conditions it
to frequently adopt an inflexible position with little room for manoeuvre.
Consequently, the impression is gained at Council meetings that in many
cases Government has already determined the issue under discussion and
intends -merely to communicate a pre-emptive decision to the staff.
Another feature of the SCSC which has remained unmodified since 1968 is
its essentially unrepresentative nature for a body which claims a
(13) ibid., Paragraph 11 (2)
(14) See England J * Rear J., op.cit. p.228. The only other occasion on
which the Committee of Inquiry device has been resorted to is in the case of Public Works Department technical grades, for whom a pay structure dispute has been referred to a committee under Professor Willoughby of Hong Kong University at time of writing.