Background to Recent Events
All unions in ilong Kong must be registered with tlie Registrar of Trade
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Unions (RTU)",
1.
: those affiliated
In 1975/6 there were 301 employee unions with 361,458 members.
These may be conveniently divided into three broad groupings or friendly to the liong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU)2; those
affiliated or friendly to the Hong Kong and Kowloon Trade Union Council (TUC)
and those unions independent of political affiliation. The communist FTU,
with its allegience to Peking, consists of 69 affiliated unions and has 29.
unions friendly to it. Combined membership in 1975/6 was 268,243 or 74%
of total union membership. The right wing TUC, with its allegience to Taiwan,
has 84 affiliated and 9 friendly unions - total membership 38,432. There
are 113 independent unions with 54,787 members - mainly white collar workers.
There are 83 unions in Hong Kong with members in civil service
employment. Total membership in 1975/6 was 46,440. Of these, 79 unions
(total membership 34,743) recruit exclusively from the civil service.
3
Since
only 6 of the latter are-affiliated to the FTU or TUC (total membership 8,732)
civil servants make up approximately half the membership of independent unions.
By international standards, unions in Hong Kong are small. In 1975/6,
33 had less than 50 members, 123 between 50 and 251, 80 between 1001 and 5001
and. there were only 15 with more than 5,000 members. Yet the colony's
population lies somewhere in the region of 5 million possibly more.
Small
unions may be partly explained by the low overall level of unionization and
small size of individual employers. The next biggest employer after the
government (104,157 employees in 1976) has only 7,000 employees,
* See Glossary of Terms for a list of all abbreviations used.
Employer Associations and mixed associations of employers and employees
The latter is a are also registered. Both are declining in strength. survivor of old Chinese guilds.
1.
2.
3.
This is not a true federation but a registered society, as is the TUC. Source Registrar of Trade Unions Annual Report 1975/6. These figures suffer from a number of defects. Only approximate RTU estimates are available for the civil service membership of unions which do not recruit exclusively from the civil service. Figures take no account of dual membership, and refer to declared membership, not financial membership. The RTU estimates the latter to be about 90% of the former.