TNAG-0087-FCO40-123-Conditions-of-employment-for-Hong-Kong-Chinese-working-in-th-1969 — Page 5

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of the contract.

A

I will deal first with questions Mr. Burn raises about the status of the "modol contract" issued by the Hong Long Government for the guidance of employers and employees alike. This in itself is not a document prescribed by statute, It does no more than suggest a form of contract which would meet with the approval of the Commissioner of Labour for purposes of attestation. To this end it includes a suggested form of words for clauses dealing with matters whose inclusion the Commissioner of Labour is bound by statute to insist upon; other details are optional. Even much of what is inserted in the mandatory clauses (e.g. wage rates, overtime pay, hours of work, holidays, advances, etc.) is negotiable; but the scope for variation of the man- datory clausus is limited since they must conform with the requirements of Section 5(2) of the Hong Kong Ordinance concerned (Contracts for Overseas Employment Ordinance). All this has been explained to Mr. Burn by his legal adviser.

I now turn to the employer's liability to pay the alien worker's passage to this country. The Ordinance (Section 5(2)(j)) imposes this liability and the model contract contains a clause which makes provision for the termination of the contract by the worker, without commitment to repay any part of the expenses incurred by the employer in regard to his passage to the United Kingdom. It is not, I think you will agree, unreasonable to expect an employer who hrings alien workers from so far away as Hong Kong to bear the sole responsibility for the expenses that he incurs.

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