TNAG-0125-FCO40-161-Labour-force-working-conditions-1969 — Page 22

Appendix

Passage from the Governor's Address to LegCo, October 1969, relating to "Labour Legislation."

We have made more progress with labour legislation than meets the eye, although I could have hoped to reach the final stage of presentation to this Council earlier in a number of cases. But this is a peculiarly difficult and complicated area, on which much consultation is necessary: and consulta- tion, as I have said before, makes for slow progress. Nevertheless, the Workmen's Compensation Bill has now been taken in Executive Council and should be presented here shortly. We hope, through its provisions, to increase the maximum limit of benefits for injured workmen and bring these benefits more into line with the now generally higher level of wages prevailing. Draft legislation will also, I hope, be ready for consideration in the near future with a view to establishing better priorities for employees' earned wages when a firm is forced to go into liquidation or bankruptcy, We shall also be taking draft amending bills to the Employment Ordinance, including one designed to enable workers to take, voluntarily, four rest dayo a month without bronch of their terms of employment, and to provide security of employment for women who need to take maternity leave. Another draft amending bill aims to extend the right to take statutory holidays with pay to non-industrial workers and to improve entitlement to sickness allowances.

I still remain of the view that great scope for improve- ments in the field of labour-management relations lies in improving the consultative machinery between the factory floor and the management offices. The Labour Department, I

now, is doing its utmost to promote joint consultative committees and I look forward to seeing a growing response from all spheres of industry.

Before leaving this topic I would like to mention the idea of labour courts, which we are considering at official lovels. I believe there may be merit in the idea of establishing a quicker, simpler mechanism than is provided by recourse to the ordinary courts, of resolving claims for the settlement of legal obligations arising out of contracts of employment. But lest the whole idea be misunderstood from the start, let me emphasise that labour courts are part of a judicial, not an executive, machinery. They deal with specific, identifiable claims by employees on employers and vice versa just as the ordinary courts do: the difference lying only in greater simplicity and speed of procedure. Specifically, it is not their function to adjudicate generalised disputes over, for example, such matters as requests for increased wages or improved conditions of service.

What they should do is enable certain types of specific claim to be rapidly adjudicated instead of having to be settled through the conciliation machinery.