TNAG-0232-FCO40-268-Legislation-relating-to-registration-of-trade-unions-in-Hong-1970 — Page 137

HONGKONG AND KOWLOON TRADES UNION COUNCIL

RIGHT TO STRIKE AND PICKET

The Eighteenth Convention of the Hongkong and Kowloon Trades

Union Council, meeting on 6th September 1970,

RECOGNISES that recent incidents involving members of our affiliated Cotton Industry Workers' General Union, demonstrate that the restrictions on the right to picket in Hongkong are so severe that it is virtually impossible to exercise this right without breaking the law or giving the police a justification for intervention;

ALSO RECOGNISES that the right to strike in Hongkong is also severely

limited;

ASSERTS the right of workers to bargain on equal terms with employers in order to receive a just return for their labour;

FURTHER ASSERTS that the right to strike is an essential element in the principle of collective bargaining and that the right to picket is a vital and internationally recognised element in the right to strike, it is a chief means by which those on strike try to persuade others to join them and not to make the strike ineffective by working for the employer and the right of the police to intervene in trade disputes must therefore be most strictly defined, which is not the case in Hongkong;

CONSIDERS that unless the law is revised, the right of trade unions to bargain freely with employers will be so severely restricted in Hongkong as to be a matter of grave concern both within the Colony and to

international opinion;

THEREFORE CALLS UPON the Government of Hongkong to instruct the police not to intervene in industrial disputes unless there is a grave danger to public order and to revise the laws governing the right to strike and picketing in the following ways: