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compulsory rest days, introduce a statutory week's paid holiday, and
restrict overtime further for young persons. Other legislative amendments
are still under process and administrative discussion; I am not fully
informed of the present state of those relating to the revision of the
Trade Union Ordinance, for instance, but if all turn out as forecast they
should remove most of the legal impediments which have been held to
Whether at this
obstruct the formation and conduct of unions in the past.
stage they will do much to help overcome the apparent weakness of trade
unionism in Hong Kong is another question.
10.
However, the main point of this introduction is to say that Hong Kong is a very complex place, and quite a lot which may be relevant is going on or under process, and that the questions put by my ostensibly simple terms of reference raise many issues which neither I nor my colleagues have as yet had time to explore as fully as they should be. For instance, a question of substantial relevance is the overall distribution of income, and the actual impact of taxation and social provisions upon it; the peculiarities of the Hong Kong situation here make this a point deserving detailed study. Again, I accept (from personal observation over a period, for instance) that there has undoubted been a very significant rise in the worker's standard of life in Hong
But I am unable to comment on the Kong over, say, the last decade. precision of the indices available to measure this rise (except to say that it is unfortunate that data is available only on wage rates, not on actual earnings) nor on the validity or otherwise of such common statements as that real wages in Hong Kong are second in Asia only to those of Japan, because I have not had time to study the data in detail
and especially its methods of construction.
11.
Similarly, I understand that before the 1967 upheavals practice of regular collective agreement had developed in certain
a
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