ENG-1964 — Page 39

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EMPLOYMENT

for workers' children, exemption of trade union operated clinics from the provisions of the Medical Clinics Ordinance, and the grant of land at a cheap rate for the construction of a union-operated secondary school.

There are 39 independent unions, a number of which continued to make improvements in their internal administration and in the services offered to their members.

The Fifth Trade Union Leadership Course organized by the Labour Department in April was attended by 23 principal officers from 20 unions. Other instruction included four lectures on in- dustrial safety, one class in trade union administration, two classes in simple trade union accounting, one class in advanced accounting and a course for women officers of trade unions.

The Labour Department prepared and issued a booklet printed in both English and Chinese on How to Strengthen Trade Unions in the Trade Union Education series. A leaflet in Chinese entitled A Trade Union Should Protect the Interest of its Members has been added to the series How to Make Your Union Effective. During the year, two trade unionists attended the Industrial Relations Course at the Ministry of Labour in London while four others and one officer from the Labour Department attended the Asian Labour Leadership Institutes organized by the Asian Labour Education Centre in Manila.

Among industrial disputes not connected with wage demands were those in the Hong Kong Tramways Limited over retirement remuneration, in the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company Limited over the dismissal of a crane operator and in the Hsin Chong - Kumagai-Gosho, one of the major contractors in the Plover Cove water scheme, over the dismissal of two workers. There were also a number of disputes in rapid succession in several cutlery factories over working arrangements in their polishing sections.

Taking disputes over wage demands into account the conciliation section of the Labour Department dealt with 1,861 disputes of which 222 involved large wage claims, compared with 182 for last year. There were another 1,639 minor disputes compared with 1,573. Altogether there were 16 strikes and the number of man- hours lost in all disputes was 46,581 which represents a substantial decrease from the figure of 87,199 in 1963.