TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 134

XV

10.

Government's role in the operation of the labour market:

(a) Its own pay policies and labour relations: this topic is

fairly well covered in our private notes and it is one which we

have discussed frequently. For the last five years or so,

the pay

investigation unit of the Civil Service Branch has been monitoring

wage trends in 68 companies selected for their similarity to

government, ie these are the largest companies in HK, most of them

having a keen eye to PR and committed to hiring the best the

labour market has to offer. We can be certain that the wage rates

in these companies will be among the highest in HK. The findings

of this survey become the raw data for negotiations between the

CSB and three unions whose membership is weighted towards senior

clerical staff indeed the form for these negotiations is the

Senior Civil Service Council. A general rate of increase is agreed

upon (with the Financial Secretary wielding a veto which he used in

1975) and this is passed on throughout the civil service, with much

attendant publicity outside (for reasons which will become obvious

below, sections 10(b) and 11). Apart from this general rate,

individual segments of the government's labour force may and often

do petition for regrading and salary increases.

S

Unions, many of them highly specific in their membership, are

very active in government. We may ask why in government, when they

are docile elsewhere? First, the majority of these unions are not

affiliated to the FTU or TUC, indicating that they are unions with

strictly economic, not political or social objectives.

Second,

they have only one employer and that employer is most susceptible

to political pressures both from Britain and within the Colony.

In other words, it is most likely to import British negotiating

procedures and most vulnerable to the threat of disruption to the

Colony's services. It is manifestly not the case that workers are

unable to take industrial action against the state. It is not

their state; it is a British presence of very tenuous political

standing. Third, government does operate with a highly standardized,

public scale of pay and work conditions a situation unique in HK,

where proliferation of methods of pay and decentralization are the

rule - and this allows concern for differentials to be manifested as

concrete rational arguments by workers. Finally, as I think the

CSB is aware,

(since they pointed out some of the more glaring

loopholes), government has a very inflexible system of labour

relations which gives workers little alternative to escalating