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233. The failure ever to make use of Minimum Wage Ordinance No. 28 of 1932 has been noted. It is submitted that the root cause of this lies in the terms and scope of the Ordinance itself. Any inquiry under the Ordinance is to be con- ducted by a board of commissioners consisting of five persons of whom one shall be a judge or magistrate who shall be chairman of the board. No provision is made for an inspectorate, with the right to require employers to supply information regarding the wages paid to employees, to see that any minimum wage is adhered

The Ordinance is merely a legislative gesture.

234. The report of the Royal Commission on Labour in 1894 analyzed the difficulties in the weakly organized trades and pointed out that peaceable relations are the result of strong and firmly established trade unionism, and that trade unionism in a weak and struggling condition rather tends to increase the number and bitterness of industrial conflicts. "The most quarrelsome period of a trade's existence is when it is just emerging from the patriarchal condition in which each employer governs his establishment and deals with his own men with no outside interference, but has not yet fully entered into that other condition in which transactions take place between strong associations fully recognizing each other."*

235. Such is largely the condition in Hong Kong and it is submitted that what is most urgently required is power to appoint trade boards, rather than commissions to deal merely with a minimum wage. The trade boards should have the power and duty of fixing minimum wages, determining normal working hours, which in some cases are grossly excessive in this Colony, and fixing overtime rates in trades where the wage standards are low and where organization of employers and workers is ineffectual. The persistence of the truck system and the grant in many cases of free quarters and sometimes food as part of a worker's emoluments make the fixing of a minimum wage frequently difficult. The trade boards might consist of repre- sentatives of workers and employers of a particular trade in equal numbers, say two or three each, to whom might be added a labour leader from a better organized trade, and a representative of employers, and the board might function under the chairmanship of the Labour Officer? Officer]

236. The Printers' Union have recently conducted a survey of most of the printing and newspaper establishments in the Colony and submitted data in consider- able detail regarding hours and wages. In the existing state of the law it is difficult to see what can be done to assist them as there is no power to control hours in respect of adult males and the length of hours of work is their chief grievance. Even a better organized union than the printers would in existing conditions in Hong Kong find it difficult to enforce its demands in respect of any establishments where conditions are notoriously bad as a number of printers is unemployed and there is always surplus labour ready to accept low terms on the principle that a little is better than nothing. The establishment of trade boards would go far to assist the con- ciliation machinery of the Labour Office.

237. During the last five months I have visited and investigated the conditions of work in the four mines and the larger industrial undertakings and in many of the smaller ones. Conditions vary greatly both as to wages and hours. It is in the small factories competing with cheap labour in China and Japan that conditions are worst. Such competition is fierce and the local manufacturers of bulbs for electric torches and of thermos flasks have recently been eliminated.

238. It is such competition in countries which have no social legislation, or if they have it do not apply it, which has been used as an argument against improve- ment of conditions in Hong Kong. There is much, however, that can be done without necessarily destroying trade as the experience of the last fifteen years shows.

} 239. It has been considered necessary to refer in this report to housing, Leducation and health: progress is being made in all these matters but their adminis

tration is outside the scope of the Labour Office as is also the question of the revision where necessary of existing restrictive legislation. The necessity of developing a proper statistical department has also been stressed.

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Quoted from "A Report prepared by the Members of the Commission on Industrial Relations in Great

Britain" appointed by President Roosevelt.