TNAG-0966-FCO40-1185-Legislation-for-employment-in-Hong-Kong-1980 — Page 271

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XCRI(80)2 Copy No HICK 21011

NOTE FOR EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

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REVIEW OF WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION

CRDINANCE (CHAPTER 282)

PA

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For information

Introduction

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see ☹

AKK 210/1

On 27th February 1979, after considering memorandum XCR(79)52 concerning the Employment (Amendment) (No 2) Bill 1979 which sought, inter alia, to extend the application of the Employment Ordinance (Chapter 57) to a higher wage earning class of non-manual workers by raising the then existing wage ceiling from $2,000 to $5,000 per month, the Council advised and the Governor ordered that the bill should be introduced into the Legislative Council subject to the revised wage ceiling for non-manual workers being set at $3,500 per month. The Council further noted that this was an interim measure, pending the consideration of a review of the Workmen's Compensation Ordinance (Chapter 282) and requested that the Commissioner for Labour report back within 12 months if no progress had been made on that review.

2

The bill was eventually passed by the Legislative Council on 25th April 1979, and came into operation on 27th April 1979.

3

The purpose of this note is to report progress made on the review mentioned in paragraph 1 above.

Workmen's Compensation Ordinance

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1979

The Working Party, established by the Commissioner for Labour in February 1978 to conduct a comprehensive review of the Workmen's Compensation Ordinance, completed its deliberations at the end of 1978 and submitted a report containing numerous recommendations to the Commissioner. The report was distributed by the Commissioner earlier last this year to various employers organisations, registered trade unions,

Government departments and other interested bodies for their comments. The response was generally favourable. All the recommendations were accepted by the Commissioner and endorsed by the Labour Advisory Board recently.

5

Since many amendments to the Workmen's Compensation Ordinance are involved, the Commissioner proposes to deal with them in two stages: first, to deal with the more urgent and relatively simple ones

G.S. 84

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