26.
appears that their stage of union organisation is behind that of other
civil servants.
Their apparent failure to develop as active a bargaining
awareness may be explained by the fact that their salary, unlike other groups,
compares favourably to those pertaining to private industry. It might also
be noted that they form the bulk of the politically-aligned union membership
in the civil service. Communist unions which account for the bulk of those
belonging to unions have made few, if any, formal representations and appear
to operate in a very covert fashion. One may also postulate that promotion
prospects are, if only by necessity, of relatively minor significance to
Mod scale 1 workers.
Conclusion
...
Many of the features of civil service labour relations in Hong Kong
are reminiscent of other developed countries. This is hardly surprising given
the strong British structural heritage and westernisation of Hong Kong.
--llowever, there are also important differences which derive less from cultural
dissimilarity than llong Kong's political situation. The emergence of an
independent union movement-bent on collective bargaining has been moulded by
the unique alliance of a labor government with a communist state to uphold an
unashamedly capitalist colony. The paternalistic colonial administration,
highly attuned to domestic business-interests, is having increased difficulty
in coping with the development of an educated, articulate and militant white
collar union movement seeking nothing short of overt collective bargaining and
eschewing the political/social club emphasis of private sector unions. The
unions already-display signs of being the genesis of a democratic movement.
In essence the conflict may represent the consequence of socio-economic changes
outstripping modifications to the political structure of an industrial
society.