The trade union plans to dissolve, and some workers are concerned about where to protect their rights and interests.
But in fact, fundamentally speaking, the responsibility of protecting and promoting labor rights lies with the government.
For a long time, low wages and lack of living have been the main reasons for Hong Kong people's dissatisfaction with the government. What these phenomena reflect is actually the disparity in power between labor and management.
The governor has the responsibility to balance the power of both parties, and the first task to do this is undoubtedly to reform the Labor Advisory Board.
The LAB is an official non-statutory organization. Both employers and employees hold six seats, and the Commissioner for Labour serves as the ex officio chairman.
Its influence is greater than that of general advisory committees. For example, in the past, bills related to labor issues were often discussed by the LAB before they were submitted to the Legislative Council in order to obtain a consensus between representatives of labor and management.
Before and after the reunification, the government threatened or implemented the withdrawal bill because the amendments made by members deviated from the consensus of the LAB. In recent examples, the government said that if paternity leave was increased from five days to seven days agreed by the LAB, the bill would be withdrawn, and once again. The Act on Reinstatement Conditions and Punishment of Employers under the Employment Ordinance.
Pursuing consensus and encouraging voluntary consultation between employers and employees is the consistent style of the LAB. However, there are no measures such as standard working hours, raising the minimum wage, establishing collective bargaining rights, universal retirement protection, and accelerating the cancellation of MPF "hedging". Avoidance will also damage the interests of the employers, so they must find it difficult to agree. Therefore, conflicts between employers and employees will naturally become the norm, and it is not easy to reach a consensus.
The Labour Department replied that members of the LAB failed to reach a consensus at the meeting on how to gradually increase the number of statutory holidays under the Employment Ordinance.
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Labor policy progress is slow
In the final analysis, the essence of businessmen is to make the most profits. They will only follow the government's minimum rules and regulations. Therefore, if they want to improve labor conditions, they still have to rely on the government's active intervention.
It is a pity that the Hong Kong government has been sitting on the sidelines for a long time in recent years.
Taking the implementation of the minimum wage as an example, the government has been procrastinating and seeing steps. It was submitted to the LAB for discussion at the end of 2004, and then submitted to the Strategic Development Committee. Then, a voluntary wage protection campaign was to be piloted until it failed. The legislation was implemented in 2011, and the starting salary is only 28 yuan per hour.
Another example is the standardization of labor and public holidays.
Relevant measures should be implemented tomorrow morning, but labor representatives continue to criticize the government for failing to "consensus" with due diligence, and even quoted the Commissioner for Labor as saying that "employers agree for ten years and employees should accept them."
Although the government later submitted its own bill to the Legislative Council, it still retained its ten-year plan and did not listen to workers' criticisms that the plan was not aggressive enough.
Many blue-collar workers are on "labour leave." The Legislative Council passed the Third Reading. In the next few years, statutory holidays will be added in stages, which will eventually be in line with bank holidays.
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The government should not impose a consensus system
However, it is worth noting that the fact that the uniform holiday reveals that the government can directly submit a bill to the parliament is just enough to prove that waiting for the "consensus" of the LAB is not a golden rule. It is more obvious that the government delays improving labor treatment because it has not reached a consensus. Excuse.
In this context, there is undoubtedly a need to review the current decision-making mechanism of the LAB.
First of all, in the future, the LAB cannot only pursue consensus on issues and expect voluntary actions by both employers and employees. The government must also actively assume the responsibility of supporting the strength of the labor force in order to achieve a balance between labor and management.
Secondly, the Commissioner for Labour, who is the chairman of the association, should be clearly empowered to make the final decision on the subject, and the minutes of the meeting must be made public so that the outside world can learn about the discussion process between the representatives of the two parties for supervision.
Finally, the government's positioning of the LAB should go beyond the role of providing advice and directly make it bear the political responsibility for improving labor protection.
From this point of view, the LAB can also consider turning into a statutory body, but the prerequisite must be to abandon the current horrible mechanism, otherwise it will only become an excuse for officials to delay the implementation of labor protection.
We will not deny the merits of the LAB, but the government must make it an aid to the implementation of measures and continue to improve the distribution of power and resources in society in order to truly promote social stability.
The trade union plans to dissolve the Hong Kong Workers’ Union.
