TNAG-0087-FCO40-123-Conditions-of-employment-for-Hong-Kong-Chinese-working-in-th-1969 — Page 66

Reference....

Convention No 50

does not apply in There ares - see

Mies osulufe's minute

326/3/68

But it does-

Aut. 20

Convention No 50?

as inn

Clause

Los

5001 of Ordinance

-

because, on an average, enough workers do stay to make the risk worth while. With Commonwealth immigrants the employer does not have to guarantee repatriation, and may not even need to pay the fare, since they are so anxious to come that many will raise the money themselves. Because they can stay in this country once they have got here, it is difficult to get permission to bring them hence the very large numbers of aliens coming from Hong Kong, rather than Commonwealth citizens. It must always be remembered that the reasons workers leave the employment of the person with whom they have made a contract are various sometimes they find the pay in the contract is less than others are getting, and they move to get better pay; sometimes the job is not what they expect, and they do not like it; sometimes personalities clash and they do not get on with one employer, but can work well and happily with another. It is really only a small minority who deliberately come with the intention of not staying with the employer who has paid their fare. Incidentally, no one, apparently, has ever pointed out to Mr. Burn that the employers who seduce workers away from those who have paid the fare should be given a share of the blame for their bad practices. It was made abundantly clear in Britain at the time when there was publicity over the domestics coming from Europe that the employer who pays the fare takes the risk that this will happen, and has no redress unless by trying to claim damages.

y

31.

In view of the fact that 500-600 workers come from Hong Kong to the U.K. every year (or has recently) I think it would have been wiser for Hong Kong and it is not too late to do this now contract for use in Europe or even the U.K. alone about a thousand and kept out many of the debatable in other countries but not in the U.K.

Capien

L

-

to keep a separate model

they could have run off clauses, which are relevant

32. I must admit I think also that the Hong Kong Government could very well have a welfare adviser in this country to whom workers in difficulty over their contracts could turn for advice and help. There must be a few thousand here now.

33.

Although it took a great deal of trouble to make the Hong Kong law and to ensure that it conformed to the I.L.0. Convention, it is still worth considering, I think, whether it could not be adapted a little without committing any breach of the Convention. Law-making and law-mending in Hong Kong moves very slowly (and I know this only too well) so that, even if what I suggest were agreed (which would in itself take considerable time to achieve) it might be long before anything useful would emerge. Nevertheless, we have recently recruited for Hong Kong someone who is to help them with revision of labour laws and this might be the ideal time to have a look at this.

34. The I.L.0. Convention does not require the employer to pay for the outward journey at all. As I have said above, the employer finds himself practically forced to do so but it is not necessary to put this in the law. The Convention says that where a worker "has been brought to the place of employment" by the employer he must have the right to repatriation. employer in Britain is quite well aware that if he does not pay the worker's passage to Britain the worker will not come; having "brought him" he must guarantee him repatriation.

The

35. The Convention allows the employer to be exempted from the expense of repatriation in some circumstances, among which is a plan for making arrange- ments for deferred pay deducted from the wages (if the rates are calculated so as to make allowance for this). There are contracts of employment for people leaving their own country to work elsewhere in existence all over the world which take full advantage of the two facts I have just mentioned. In many cases the employer advances the money for the outward journey and is repaid by deductions from the worker's wages (all this has to be put into the contract of course), frequently with the added inducement that the longer the worker stays with the employer the less he has to refund for the outward journey To make any such arrangement would require an amendment to the Hong Kong law and they might very well wish to restrict it extremely closely, e.g. to the U.K. or Europe only; to cases where the worker's wage exceeded the statutory minimum by some fixed amount etc.

/Proposed