STAFF IN CONFIDENCE
-2-
Home Civil Service Candidates for Hong Kong
6.
Mr Macleod would also interview the 24 officers who had offered themselves from the Home Civil Service in the recent trawl. Hong Kong expected to take between 4 and 6 people over the next 12 months.
Industrial relations in the Civil Service
7.
Mr Rowlands said that the situation had improved, helped by the initial report of the Standing Commission on Salaries. He thought that the Health Department, which had been the weak spot, had improved its management. In general, he saw the staff associations as likely to grow rather more moderate during the 1980s. Civil Servants were on the whole well paid. and were beginning to learn that they were not likely to get their own way through industrial action. (Comment: Mr Rowlands may be rather over optimistic here. Sir J Cater takes a more pessimistic view of line management and I would expect that there was still a chance that Civil Service unions, which are the most powerful in Hong Kong, would press their cases pretty strongly on such vexed questions as housing).
2 December 1980
R D Clift
STAFF IN CONFIDENCE
F