TNAG-0585-FCO40-718-Employment-of-children-in-Hong-Kong-1976 — Page 278

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London that this policy was accepted by the Hong Kong Government and that only the difficulty of persuading the Hong Kong employers of the need for this reduction stood in the way of this much delayed improvement in the hours of work of women and young persons.

6. It transpired, however, that there had been second thoughts and that, although the undertaking to reduce hours of work had been given by the Hong Kong Government as far back as 1959, the Financial Secretary, for example, remained opposed on economic grounds to any general reduction of hours of work of women and young persons 'without a full study of its probable economic consequences'. This opposition moreover was not expressed in relation to an immediate reduction to an

eight-hour day, but in relation to a very modest six- stage programme of reducing the working day by twenty minutes a year to be completed in December 1972. This programme had the agreement in writing of the four organisations of employers, but although in the past it had been maintained by the Hong Kong Government that any changes in hours of work must have employer support, at the moment the employers' support was forthcoming fresh

obstacles were raised within the Secretariat. This absence of Secretariat support for a policy agreed between London and successive Governors must in part account for the extraordinary delays which have occurred since 1959 in achieving an improvement in working hours of women and young persons.

7.

Even this modest programme developed largely from employer initiatives after the rejection of an industry

by industry approach to the problem. The general sentiments expressed by senior officials during my visit about the Hong Kong worker and his alleged disregard for the value of leisure lead me to quote an extract from the Debate in the House of Commons in 1908 on the eight-

hour day for miners.

"The general march of industrial democracy is not

towards inadequate hours of work, but towards sufficient hours of leisure. That is the movement among the working people all over the country. They are not content that their lives should remain mere alternations between bed and the factory. They demand time to look about them, time to see their homes by daylight, to see their children, time to think and read time, in short, to live.

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