-- UNREST WARNING OVER LACK
OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
Govt hit
on union mix-ups
CERTAIN internationally-recog- nised labour conventions relating to workers' and their rights are being "blatantly ignored in Hongkong.
This was the opinion of Mr Tom Pendry, British Labour Member of Parliament, voiced during the RHK-TV discussion with ,prominent Hongkong financial journalist, Mr Leo Goodstadt, telecast yesterday.
Mr Pendry declared that among other conventions, two in particular deliberately ignored in the Colony.
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These are international Labour Organisation Conventions 87 and 98.
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20.8.73.
The first refers to the right of workers to combine freely and for employers' associations to combine freely without interference placed on them from one or another source or even Government.
"Convention 98 is a question of unions which are dominated perhaps by employers. Now in Hongkong you've got at least 12 what are call mixed unions where employers and employees are all jumbled up together. It is unblatant contravention of that convention itself," Mr Pendry said.
Commenting on the preponderence of businem representation on the Executive and Legislative Councils, he said he would like to see more worker, representation in the democratic process.
"I would say it is an advantage of course to have businessmen at every level of activity in Hongkong whether it be Legco or what ever. I am saying that there ought to be moves in a British Crown Colony to bring into areas of Government and democratic life men as it were, from the shop floor."
"We have been impressed, my colleague and I, at the level of intelligence shown by many of these people and the way in which they have brought to Legco and other bodies good arguments and cases when they have been affected, their place of work, or it Hulk place where they live and so on. And we felt they should be brought into the of Government,” Mr
areas Pendry said.
He said one of the most important is to create a legal framework for genuine trade unionists.
If the forces are not here, the unions would develop anyway and may be of the political kind and as a result there may be potential trouble ahead, with a repetition of the 1962 disturbances, Mr Pendry said.
"After '67 many employers in Hongkong said we've learnt our lesson, from now on we've going to have a rapport with workers, we're going to do Al the right things', but as soon as i the tempers went down then those issues, those ideas rather went out of the window."
"Now the Government have
a responsibility to create 2
climate in which good trade Ltd, Gp.863 unionism could. and can flourish. And I gather it is being done," Mr Pendry said.
Questioned by Mr Goodstadt on his remark that Hongkong had the climate for potential trouble that could develop into riots Mr Pendry answered: **What I am saying is this. There are, issues and you all know about them which are just beneath the surface, they are irritants, there are fustrations and I was here in '56.
"It was very small incidents which sparked off a pretty major confrontation between many of the people and Government at the time. Now that the kind of thing that could happen in Hongkong at any time, at this moment, because there are all kinds of problems and fustrations."
"You know you've got the police and you've got housing and you've got hanging and you've got all sorts of things at the moment that we as visiting MPs have had flung at us. They a points of concern in this society, what I'm saying is that Government has got a duty to take one area, that's industrial rel...ions out of the explosive situation and try and steer a pretty steady path," concluded. «
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