TNAG-0916-FCO40-1127-Policy-on-salaries-and-pensions-for-civil-servants-in-Hong-K-1979 — Page 122

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there are recruitment and retention difficulties. In the circumstances, we propose to examine further the need for omitted points in the context of our review of individual grades. From the representations we have received, it is clear that their existence in some scales and not in others is a cause of resentment among some civil servants.

Conversion Arrangements

54.

While there is general agreement that the existing complex and barely comprehensible rules for converting the salary of an officer from one scale to another should be simplified, most of the comments we have received on conversion arrangements indicate satisfaction with the results achieved by the rules. We believe, however, that in certain circumstances, the rules as they stand display an excessive concern for the preservation of relative seniority within a scale, particularly since pay and seniority are not necessarily related. We recommend, therefore, that new rules should be drawn up which should provide that no civil servant shall lose on conversion but the extent to which he benefits on conversion should not normally exceed one increment.

55.

Any revised rules for converting salaries should not restrict us from recommending special conversion arrangements where we consider such arrangements to be necessary or appropriate.

Model Scale 1

56.

As we stated in the Consultative Document, the 1971 Salaries Commission intended that employees on Model Scale 1 should form the base for a non-pensionable industrial civil service to be established at a later date. Subsequently, in 1973, a Government Committee which was appointed to examine the proposal for an industrial civil service recommended that it should not be created. Instead the Committee proposed that Model Scale 1 employees should be brought within a unified civil service and attached to the occupational classes established by the 1971 Commission. However, neither the 1971 Salaries Commission's proposal for an industrial civil service nor the Government Committee's proposal for a unified civil service was implemented, although some steps have been taken to reduce the differences in conditions of service of Model Scale 1 and Master Pay Scale employees.

57.

Since it appeared to us that there was no clear cut policy for Model Scale 1 employees, we sought the views of staff and management on the future principles and practices which should be applied to them. In particular we asked whether the long term objective should be to eliminate the differences between Model Scale 1 and Master Pay Scale employees altogether, or whether the circumstances of the employment of Model Scale 1 employees justified their remaining a separate group within the civil service.

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