Extract from
ANNEX TO XCC(78)95
Speech by the Hon. Martin Rowlands
Secretary for the Civil Service
in Legislative Council on 16 ilovember 1978
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12.
I welcome the constructive views expressed by
Mr. Cheong-leen, Dr. Fang, Miss Dunn and Mr. Wong Lam on the need for a salaries commission, or other suitable machinery, to help resolve the salary and structure problems which have recently been giving rise to unwelcome friction within the civil service.
13.
Our present class structure and salary scales are based on the recommendations of the 1971 Salaries Commission. These have served us well, but, inevitably, as the years pass and circumstances change the need to review then grows stronger. Certainly, the aspirations of civil servants seem to me to have changed markedly in recent years, as has the social and economic environment within which the civil service operates.
14.
As Dr. Fang has pointed out, the present arrange- ments for settling pay and structure problems within the civil service are no longer effective. They may well have been appropriate when the service was smaller and less complex, when staff associations were fewer and less active, and when management was still able to take most decisions with little or no consultation with staff. Eut most people would agree that these days are gone forever, and that our present ad hoc arrangements need to be replaced quickly by comprehensive machinery incorporating agreed procedures for the handling of pay and related claims.
15.
It is of course those staff who threaten or take industrial action who attract attention. The public hears little of all the other civil servants, some 115,000 or so, who are not currently pressing a pay claim, nor, I might add, threatening the community with industrial action. I am sure it will be agreed that we must look after the interests of this great silent majority, some of whom are deliberately refraining from any action which might embarrass the community in the expectation that we shall not overlook their needs. This means, I suggest, that we should not review the salary scales of staff who are threatening industrial action without at the same time being prepared to review the salary scales of the silent majority.
16.
I believe, Sir, that everything that has been said in this debate points to the need to establish special machinery to advise the Government on the class structure and salary scales of the whole civil service, excepting only Directorate posts.
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