TNAG-0130-FCO40-166-Staff-Associations-and-Trade-Unions-1969 — Page 49

Reference....... HKK 5/26

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Mr. Carter

When Lord Shepherd was in Hong Kong he was given

a petition and memorandum from the Chinese Civil Servants Association (CCSA). This is at (5). At (7) we asked the Governor what reply, if any, should be sent to the Association.

2.

The main purpose of the CCSA letter seems to have been to involve this Ministry in the question whether the Association should continue its member- ship of the Senior Civil Service Council which had then been in existence for one year. The CCSA is apparently dissatisfied (as numerically the largest of the three Staff Associations comprising the Council) with what they find the subordination of their sectional interests to those of the Civil Service as a whole.

3. With Hong Kong's reply at (8) is the record of a meeting of the Senior Civil Service Council held only ten days after the CCSA gave Lord Shepherd their petition. At that meeting the CCSA attempted to break away from the Council but were deterred by the other two Associations (the AESC and SNEOA). The main issue from which the CCSA's discontent arises is that of equal pay for women. It may be that this issue does not mean so much for the other Associations because it is apparently to the CCSA that the majority of the teachers and nursing staff belong.

4.

It would no doubt be possible to look into the individual staff items which were discussed at the Senior Civil Service Council meeting and to find in one or more of them grounds for discontent on the part of the CCSA, even if those grounds were no more than the usual complaint by staff that Government is deliberate to the point of being dilatory over settl- ing grievances. But this would not give good grounds for advising the CCSA to handle the affairs of its members in any other way than by association with the other grades of staff whose Associations make up the Joint Council. There is a most important issue of principle here. In any Government served by a

staff of different nationalities it is fatal to encourage sectional representation, and most

of all to do so on the grounds that any nationality is in a majority. Hong Kong must be of all terri- tories the one in which this principle should be most scrupulously observed; or developed if it does not exist.

5. The sort of answer therefore which ought to be given to the CCSA is that which the Colonial Government has drafted. We may be able to find fault with the wording: indeed it would be possible to say that Hong Kong are asking us to remind the Chinese Staff Association in rather too sharp terms that they and the other Associations are all in the same boat. But the idea behind the draft answer I think is the right one. Certainly we can have no truck with the suggestion that a Royal Commission looks into the matter of Staff Associations in the

Hong Kong Civil Service. After only one year's experiment with the Joint Council that would be a regrettable step which could only encourage more sectionalism than already exists.

/6....