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affairs and of high quality since the Council has in effect, certain executive functions; works very closely with the official side of the Government on most matters relating to the Colony's affairs; and therefore has much greater access to confidential information than, say, Members of Parliament. In his view LegCo is more analogous to a Cabinet, or body of Ministers, than to a Legislature on the Westminster model. there is representation from organised labour, or at least a personality recognized as a credible spokesman for the workers'
interests it would be difficult for the Secretary of State to convince the TUC and NEC that proper account is taken of working class interests, though it is to be hoped that a firm programme of labour legislation, as set out in Annex D, should go some way towards reassuring them.
20.
At the non-governmental level, a conspicuous feature of Hong Kong is the weakness and fragmentation of the trade union movement and the absence of collective bargaining on any significant scale. Total trade union membership is only 15.4% of the working population. This is in part due to the fragmentation of industry: out of some 25,000 establishments in 1974 only 118 employed more than 500 people and no less than 15,000
employed less than 10. It is also in part due to differing political allegiances, with pro-Communist trade unions representing nearly three quarters of the total membership (231,000); pro- Taiwan unions representing 37,000 and politically non-aligned unions mainly in the public sector representing 49,000. Various
attempts have been made by the British and international trade
union movements to stimulate the growth of trade unionism and
collective bargaining in Hong Kong but without success. We
suspect that deep sociological, economic and political factors
militating against normal growth and activities of a trade union
movement are at work and a study is being commissioned to
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