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John Thompson has reported to me on the discussions he had with you on this subject during his recent visit to Hong Kong. He explained to me the quandary you were placed in by the timing of Frank liooley's PQ. As I understand it, you had intended to call for a new pay review for the secretarial grades which would have provided, or given the excuse to provide, new conditions of service which could have been accepted by all in the grades. You now feel, John tells me, that to do this so soon after the FG would suggest that you were bowing to pressure from the UK and could lead to a rash of disputes being brought to us direct. As a result you feel you must wait some months before going ahead with your plan. I can see the danger, but I am afraid that with the pressure that is now building up at this end, we cannot afford to wait that long.
5. We had been pinning great hopes on the new procedures for resolving disputes in the Civil Service referred to by kon Bridge in his letter /5/2/6 111 of 17 November 1977. It seemed to us that if such a scheme was indeed in the offing, all we needed to do was to give an undertaking to SATA that their case would be submitted to it in due course in order to persuade them, in the meantime and without prejudice, to accept the regrading on the terms proposed. But, to judge from the fact that nothing more has been said about this scheme in recent correspondence, it would seem that the change is in fact a lot further off than we had originally been led to believe.
6. If you cannot soon announce the new pay review, I think we must return to our original proposal of arbitration. The people who have been pressing for action at this end would like an arbitrator to be sent out from London.
It would, however, be out of proportion to the importance of this very minor dispute to go to such lengths. But would it not be possible to find somebody locally who could give
1 do an independent view on the various points at issue? not see why it would be unfair to those girls who have accepted the regrading to bring in an arbitrator at this stage (provided, of course, they are all given the benefit of any improvements that may emerge from the arbitration process). Nor can it be argued that to submit this case to arbitration now would prejudice the proposals for a new, service wide scheme to deal with labour disputes if it seems, after all, that such a scheme is still some way off.
7. I fully appreciate the difficulty that such a proposal creates for you, particularly in view of the fact that you have gone on record as saying that arbitration is not appropriate. If you can think of any other way of resolving" the dispute, we should be glad to consider it.
But:
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/certainly