TNAG-0648-FCO40-796-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 4

Foreign and Commonwealth Office London S.W.1

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6/54 May 1977 Whethon, wykly, D.

Professor H A Turner PhD MA BSc (Econ) Burton Professor of Industrial Relations University of Sydney Sydney NSW 2006 Australia

(copied to Professor Turner at the Centre for Asian Studies University of Hong Kong)

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VED IN 1 50, 51 9 MAY 1977

Dear Bert,

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NOW SEE

FOLIO (151)

Many thanks for your letter of 29 March and for the paper prepared by an Australian Commonwealth Scholar, Margaret Gardner, on "Industrial Disputes in Hong Kong". I delayed a reply until I had heard what the OLCC had to say on 29 April about your own "Interim and Provisional Review of Labour Relations in Hong Kong". I agree that Miss Gardner reaches many of the conclusions of your own study and the material she provides might well be incorporated in your final work. Hong Kong employers are certainly presented as enjoying organisational advantages over Hong Kong workers.

In preparing a background paper for the OLCC I tried to incor- porate what I thought to be the TUC's initial reactions to your interim review. It seemed to me that they were looking for an institutional role for the Hong Kong unions and would be seeking clarification of what you had in mind for the trade unions in fixing, a general legal minimum wage (paragraph 80(1) of your interim report), and filling the gap in labour relations at workplace level (paragraph 80(2)). At one point, Hargreaves seemed to be thinking in terms of the Hong Kong Trades Boards Ordinance of 1940 and the possibility it provides for giving unions the chance to take part in fixing statutory wage rates on an industrial basis; but his main theme appeared to be giving the unions a broader institutional role in planning the expansion of social services (education, housing, medical, social security, etc) which Fatricia Fosh's surveys demonstrated command wide support among the majority of workers.

Hargreaves also seems to have concluded that the interim report shows a need for the final phase of your enquiries to be based on closer contact with trade union and employer opinion in Hong Kong. He has argued that the interim report hardly refers at all to trade union opinion in Hong Kong, nor does it indicate that any systematic investigation of the views of employers' bodies has taken place, though it does report views held in Hong Kong in regard to the labour market and the labour force which, in Hargreaves' view, may have

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