TNAG-0087-FCO40-123-Conditions-of-employment-for-Hong-Kong-Chinese-working-in-th-1969 — Page 9

W(B)L 51-74 33

NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN

Registry

No. HWB 18/2

SECURITY CLASSIFICATION

Top Secret.

Secret.

Confidential.

Restricted. Unclassified.

PRIVACY MARKING

...In Confidence

DRAFT

LETTER

To:-

Type 1 +

From

Mrs. M. L. Jeger, M.P.,

Telephone No. & Ext.

House of Commons.

Department

30

I am now able to let you have my further

comments on the representation by Mr. Burn

enclosed with your letter of 13 November.

To correct a possible misapprehension, I

Straughtang ought first of all to explain that this is not,

as your letter suggests, a case of a firm

meeting difficulties in prolonged attempts to

clarify its position. It is a case rather,

of the firm's unwillingness to recognise the

difficulties which make it impossible for the

Hong Kong Government to agree to contracts for

the employment of alien Chinese workers in this

country being made more favourable to the

employer, so far as passage expenses to and

from this country are concerned.

Mr. Burn himself says that his only

difficulty is over the question of passages,

and by this we understand him to be referring

to the employers' liability, under contracts

attested by the Commissioner of Labour, to pay

the alien workers' passages back to Hong Kong,

in part at least, as well as to this country.

He is particularly aggrieved that the employer

should have to meet the passage costs to the

U.K. in cases where the worker walks out or

terminates his employment without working the

full period of the contract,

7

I will deal first with questions Mr. Burn

raises about the status of the "model contract"

/ issued

...