POLITICIZATION OF CHINESE CRAFT ORGANIZATION
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Implicit in the actions of the nationalist group was the desire to prove the superiority of its political stripe by winning greater gains for its constituents. Capital may indeed have been receptive to nationalist attempts to upstage the Communist rival.
Despite its divisions, organized labor had signalled the end of what had been an era of relative industrial peace during the 1950's. Not to be caught unawares in the future, the art carved furniture shop and factory proprietors organized the Art Carved Furniture and Camphorwood Chests Merchants Association as the bargaining agent for capital within the year. When the next strike occurred in the industry in 1964, the merchants were prepared to take full advantage of both the traditional as well as political divisions within the ranks of their workers. As the strike of 1964 dragged into its second month, the Merchants' Association succeeded in wooing a group of painters away from the main body of striking workers and concluded an agreement with them which successfully broke the back of the strike. Next, they were able to isolate the Communist Woodwork Carvers' Union by continuing negotiations with the nationalist unions after their workers had returned to work. The Woodwork Carvers' Union never came to formal terms in 1964, claiming in the local press that it had succeeded in exacting more favorable terms for its members from individual employers.
The center stage of the 1964 dispute was clearly occupied by the Merchants' Association in its manoeuverings and dealings with separate groups of its divided labor force. The merchants were waxing strong as power-driven machinery had by that time been introduced into production, increasing the capital required to operate competitively in the industry, widening the income gulf between worker and boss and increasingly alienating the workers from the tools of their trade. Labor's position was still being undermined by the persistence of a labor force divided along craft occupational lines, although politics had by now been established as the dominant divisive factor.
Another work stoppage occurred in 1967 when communist workers answered the call for a general strike put forward by the communist Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, the umbrella labor organization charged with implementing the Maoist political line radiating from Peking at the local Hong Kong level. The call for a general strike and the large-scale rioting which precipitated