TNAG-0232-FCO40-268-Legislation-relating-to-registration-of-trade-unions-in-Hong-1970 — Page 157

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This view of the law had to be changed by statute, and that is the

purpose of section 48 of our Trade Union Registration Ordinance. Its

effect is to make strikes lawful. However, three qualifications must

be made which apply both to the United Kingdom and to Hong Kong.

Limitations on the right to strike

First, to be lawful the agreement or act must be "in contemplation

or furtherance of a trade dispute", which includes disputes between

employers and workmen or between workmen and workmen. The dispute must

be "connected with the employment or non-employment, or the terms of

the employment, or with the conditions of labour, of any person". Thus

strikes with a purely political purpose or used solely to further a

personal quarrel between an employee and an employer are outside the

protection of the section. But strikes with mixed motives, e.g.,

partly political but still genuinely connected with terms of employment,

are lawful in English law.

Secondly, if the agreement in question is an agreement to commit a crime (as opposed to civil wrong, such as a breach of contract) or any

act done is itself a crime, the Ordinance affords no protection. In

particular, the Ordinance just like the English Act does not alter the

law about riots, unlawful assemblies and breaches of the peace. Those

remain criminal even if done in furtherance of a trade dispute.

Thirdly, it is a crime in the United Kingdom for persons employed

in the supply of gas, water and electricity wilfully and maliciously to break their contracts of service where the probable consequence is to

deprive the inhabitants of the area of their supply "wholly or to a

great extent",

Additional limitations in Hong Kong

But to these qualifications must be added others peculiar to Hong Kong.

In the first place, section 3 of the English Trade Disputes Act 1906,

which makes legal the act of inducing a breach of contract or interfering

with another's trade or business as long as it is in contemplation or

furtherance of a trade dispute, is reproduced in section 42 of the Trade

Union Registration Ordinance in a modified form: instead of protecting

an act done by any person, as does the English Act, the Ordinance only

confers inmunity from suit on trade unions.

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