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as any strike o. the part of workers, and faots have clearly and patently demonstrated that the law has been giving enough warnings of serious punishment against some prospective strikes in this time of emergency, repeated nogotiations in the presence of the Labour Office in the course of this period of nearly a month have still failed to elicit even a little merciful concession from the adamant obduracy of the employer.
As a matter of fact, in spite of the comprehensiveness and the equitability of the officially established mutual agree- ment between workers and employer and other official regulations in respect to both sides, facts have, for many times, authentically impressed the general workers in this Colony that they are the only party whose departure from these agreement and Regulations (there hasn't been any hitherto) categorically means heavy punish- ment while that of the other party, the employer, enjoys impunity.
May not the subsistence of this group of workers matter much to the profit of the employer; may even the sacrifice of them invite no mercy from those who should be concerned for the liveli- hood of the workers. However, ill effects are cropping out every minutes as the inevitable consequences of this event. And it grieves us to enumerate the following:
(1) Local Communist newspapers are saliently frantic in imput- ing the closure of this Factory to that the ICFTU's Delegation has abetted its workers to demand exorbitantly for more wages, (vir- tually no oral or written demand has been made yet) while their other propaganda instruments and agents keep busy in disseminating the rumours that the ICFTU's Delegation has brought ill luck to *Hong Kong.
(2) In addition, Communist agitators and instigators have been surreptitiously at work sowing the seed of demagogism and agitation and "converting" more workers to their side unctuously and plausib- ly promising this and that, since of the 1700 workers (approx.) in that factory, about 100 were dupes under the Communist-controlled Rubber Workers' association and seventy percent were attached to the Rubber bhoes Workers' Association of this TUC.
(3) After the complete discharge of this group of pitiful workers, it appears that no concession can be yielded from the employer by way of negotiations before the Government officers, repeated protests, humble supplication, and an appeal to the public for moral support. The loftiness and inaccessibility of the employer stall remain untouched and unquestioned by any existing established institution in this Colony. bone leading employers in Hong Kong begin to be sensible of the objective that this complete discharge of workers is nothing out a complete "purge" itself after which the employer will re-enlist new and "obedient" workers by means of the signing of some special contract to the prejudice of the legal rights of the workers.
The triumph of the employer of this Fung Kung Rubber Shoes Factory has rapidly exerted sufficient influence to encourage other employers to follow suit. And once again the subsistence of our workers is at the mercy of the capricious will of the employer. To deign to accept or to spurn workers' demands is entirely at his,