TNAG-0510-FCO40-575-Registration-of-merchant-shipping-in-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 31

INTE

International Transport Workers' Federation CEI

Fédération Internationale des Ouvriers du Transport Internationale Transportarbeiter-Föderation 191 Federación Internacional de los Trabajadores del Transporte Internationella Transportarbetarefederationen

ITF, Maritime House, Old Town, Clapham, London, SW4 0JA

Mr. George Foggon CMG OBE Overseas Labour Adviser

Foreign and Commonwealth Office Great George Street

LONDON S.W.1.

Your Ref.

ๆๆ

Head Office: Maritime House, Old Town, Clapham,

London, SW4 0JR

Telephone:

Telegrams:

01-622 5501/3

Intransfe, London, SW4

Please address all communications to the General Secretary and confine each letter to one subject only.

00912

Our Ref. HL/AE

Date 18 March 1974

Dear Georg

orge,

·

Hong Kong

MiFOGGON,

Thanks very much for your letter of 1 March. good of you to go to so much trouble.

It was

19/3

Our problem with the Hong Kong Amalgamated Union of Seafarers is that we have been told by people who ought to know that its new lease of life owes much to the encourage- ment of a group of Chinese shipowners operating under flags-of-convenience. The story is that they would like a captive union, affiliated with the ITF, with which they could then conclude "collective agreements". They reasoned, very naïvely, that the fact of affiliation with us would be enough to give their agreements our approval and so avoid the kind of problem that flags-of-convenience vessels run

into.

Not

In fact we have never been under any obligation to rubber-stamp our affiliates' agreements and, indeed, in many cases we have told them that they were not good enough. that we have so far been called on to make any such judgment in the case of Hong Kong, since we no longer have a seafarers' union there and until we are absolutely satisfied that the Amalgamated Union if free from shipowner influence, we are unlikely to have one. It could be that our suspicions are unjustified but we have to be extra careful in that part of the world to keep our nose clean. I might say that when I spoke to representatives of the overseas shipowners there, they told me that they had no doubt at all that the Amalgamated Union was in the Chinese shipowners' pocket.

Best regards,

R. RM Wat?

19/3

Yours sincerely,

Hawld

Harold Lewis

Assistant General Secretary

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