POLITICIZATION OF CHINESE CRAFT ORGANIZATION
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would hold a meeting. Attendance usually ran upwards of twenty people and various items of business to which the union had to see were dealt with, such as: a response to a letter from the Registry of Trade Unions of the Hong Kong government; preparations for the October 1st celebration; discussion of the wage raise to be demanded and ultimately attained in 1973, planning of a picnic which was to take place on the birthday of the historic founder of the carpentry and carving trades, Lupan (discussed below), etc.
On occasion a representative from the Federation of Trade Unions would sit in on a meeting to see how the union was doing, bringing with him or her news of significance to the labor movement in general for workers to discuss, and these discussions were usually fairly lively, most participants doing their best to give a favorable impression of the workings of their union.
Once a month the union receives copies of a Federation of Trade Union newspaper entitled Hong Kong Worker (*1st) in which various sorts of articles concerning the working class in Hong Kong appear. There are also articles about China, explanations of current policy initiatives, sports news, a regular women's column and political cartoons as well. On March 29, 1973 I was invited to sit in on a discussion of the articles in the latest issue. The headline article concerned the death of several construction workers who had fallen from scaffolding during the construction of the new Connaught Center Building on Hong Kong island. A free-ranging discussion followed the reading aloud of the article, with those workers who could read with facility taking turns reading successive paragraphs. Industrial safety and industrial accidents in Hong Kong were the main topic of the discussion and the question of how this topic applied to workers in the art carved furniture industry was raised and discussed as well. Lest one think the extrapolation to the furniture industry a bit strained, Labor Department figures for industrial accidents for the first four months of 1973 "were the worst in Hong Kong's history, with an average of one death and 70 injuries every day" (Hong Kong Standard, June 29, 1973).
A high degree of class identity was expressed by the workers during the discussion and the question of industrial safety linked to relations between workers and capitalists, the drive for profit, lack of concern for workers' welfare, etc. The sessions occur on a regular