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EMPLOYMENT
with the unions. The negotiations were subsequently held directly and separately. By the middle of June settlement was reached in all the four organizations and mutually-agreed increases in basic pay and allowance were made retrospective from March 1. About 11,000 manual employees benefited from these wage adjustments. Some 2,000 stevedores negotiated through their union with their employers and received a 20–23 per cent increase in pay from June 1. The department has since 1958 advocated the establishment of joint consultation machinery. At least 10 large organizations are now known to have made joint consultative arrangements to provide better communication between management and workers on matters arising within the organization, such as health, safety, welfare, grievances, discipline, working arrangements and, in some cases, certain conditions of employment. To meet the greater need of industry for labour relations services, the advisory service and conciliation section of the department were combined to form the Labour Relations Service. To obtain a clear understanding of industrial relations in various establishments and to help firms develop better practices in communication, the labour adviser on industrial relations embarked on an extensive programme of visits.
Major disputes in the year were due mainly to disagreement over piece rates (particularly in the woollen knitting industry), redun- dancy, dismissal, and insolvency. In an involved dispute at a woollen knitting factory, the department contributed to settlement by assisting both parties in creating a wage-fixing and wage- adjusting procedure for piece-work, which proved useful not only in this factory but later in other woollen knitting establishments.
The legal requirements regarding the registration and control of trade unions are set out in the Trade Union Registration Ordinance and administered by the Registrar of Trade Unions. He deals with all applications for registration by new trade unions and trade union federations and registers any alterations to rules, changes of name, amalgamations, or dissolutions of registered unions. He also has the power to cancel the registration of a trade union in certain circumstances but the union has the right of appeal against his decision to the Full Court.
Any person may be a member or an officer of a trade union provided he is ordinarily resident in the colony and habitually