Labour Disputes and Stoppages
The outstanding features of the year were the development of the claims (mentioned in the Report for 1949) made by the employees of the public utilities and similar groups of workers for the grant of a special allowance of about $3 a day and, in the summer, the stoppage of work in the important and long-established Fung Keong Rubber Factory.
The dispute between the management and the Tramway Union flared up on Christmas day after a series of intensive negotiations which had lasted about six weeks.
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In the course of these negotiations the management agreed to submit the question of the special allowance to arbitration but this was rejected by the union and on Christmas day the traffic staff started a strike. This took the form of the non-collection of fares, although normal schedules were maintained. The management took no action over the Christmas holidays but on 28th December with- drew all tramcars from service. Notices were posted dismissing conductors at once and giving the rest of the traffic staff one week in which to return to work. Notices were also posted informing all employees that they could register for re-employment. Few if any of the workers took advantage of this and the picketing was so thorough and severe that those workers who attempted to re- register experienced great difficulties. During January various union meetings were held, 'comfort' funds for the strikers were instituted by the Federation of Trade Unions and 'comfort missions' were organized which were made the occasion for inflammatory speeches broadcast to the public through loudspeakers. On 30th January a serious incident occurred during one of these missions when pickets resisted the police who had been sent to remove the loudspeakers, the use of which had been forbidden. The incident left a most unfavourable impression on the general public, and indeed on the more conservative elements of the workers themselves. On 10th February the strike ended with a general return to work, after 44 days and the loss of 77,000 man-days. The management stood by the offers they had made during negotiations, but both sides agreed to accept the award of the arbitrator in the Dairy Farm arbitration then in progress in preference to having recourse to separate arbitration proceedings. As a result of the Dairy Farm award a special allowance of thirty dollars a month was offered to and accepted by the workers in March.
The demand for a special allowance of $90 a month (26/3d. a week) was put forward by two unions of Dairy Farm workers towards the end of 1949 almost simultaneously with practically identical demands made by the Tramway Union, four public utility unions and two bus workers' unions. All these unions are affiliated to the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions.
The workers claimed that this special allowance was essential to meet the increase in cost of living and that the existing sliding scale Rehabilitation Allowance was inadequate.
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