Stanley Ng, the youngest-ever chairman of The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, endeavours to take the unions forward to the next level.

Labor unions will step up and stand at the forefront to fight for their welfare amid the economic downturn, said Stanley Ng Chau-pei, the new chairman of The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions.

They will closely monitor whether enterprises will use the financial tsunami as a pretext to lay off staff, cut wages or staff welfare, and will make representations with the concerned enterprises to demand full compensation as provided by the law, if necessary.

If the enterprises decline to enter dialogues, unions will pursue radical actions.

Ng has been a member of the Hong Kong Clerical and Professional Employees General Unions for about 10 years and is now their president. A member of the Federation's executive committee, Ng was elected chairman in April. Between January 2007 and December 2008, he was a part-time member of the SAR government's Central Policy Unit.

Ng noted that the wave of redundancy surged in the first quarter of 2009, following the onset of the financial crisis last September because many companies launched massive headcount exercises. In recent months, cases of redundancy have decreased, yet the number of pay-cut and welfare-reduction cases is increasing.

Some unscrupulous employers have forced staff to become "self-employed", even though their work tools are provided by the employers, to avoid mandatory provident fund contributions.

Some use the ploy of cutting the wages of the employees before forcing them to resign, in order to save a large amount of money in severance pay.

"The strike of car park security guards employed by Link Management Company is a typical case," he told China Daily. "By changing from three shifts to two shifts, Link in fact cut staff wages, because the working hours have become much longer, though it appeared to have increased wages. We felt very furious, and it was only when we protested fiercely that the company made any concession."

"That's why a statutory minimum wage is necessary to protect the low-paid workers, as there are over 200,000 workers whose earnings are below the social security allowance level," he said.

The banking and insurance sectors bore the brunt of the financial meltdown, with the large banks and insurance companies wielding the axe to their staff rosters, even though they were making greater profits in 2008 than the year before, he said.

"After the trade unions had protested strongly, the companies slowed a bit, but they then acted in a sly manner by resorting to smaller scale headcounts, hoping to keep their actions unnoticed.

"We will of course speak out and act for the sacked staff and fight for their rightful compensation. In the light of the financial tsunami, our executive committee of the new term has resolved to strengthen our work in protection of workers' rights," he stressed.

On the government's role, Ng admitted it is difficult for the government to ask the enterprises not to sack people in a market economy. It can, somehow, curb unemployment by providing a better business environment and creating more job opportunities.

"Yet the 21 percent jobless rate in the construction sector reflects the delay of the 10 major infrastructural projects, which were mentioned in the 2007 Policy Address. To tackle serious unemployment in the construction industry, the government must act expeditiously," he commented.

However, the high unemployment rate of 24 percent among the young shows that various youth employment projects are less than successful.

Though the government has launched a range of livelihood measures, it did not heed the unions' proposal to issue cash vouchers to stimulate consumption and to extend the traffic allowance scheme to a territory-wide plan.

"The existing scheme applies to only several districts. We suggest this be expanded to cover all districts to give people, who are willing to work, the incentive to find jobs across the districts, instead of applying for social security," he said.

The HKFTU had proposed to Financial Secretary John Tsang a provisional unemployment allowance to help the middle class, who are the biggest victims of the financial crisis.

They were disappointed that Tsang did not accept their proposal. "The government feared that such an allowance would become a permanent financial burden," Ng said. "In our view, the government should respond to the special circumstances amidst the financial tsunami. If he listened to us, we could further discuss with him the amount and the period of allowance. But he was a bit conservative in not even discussing it with us."

Social responsibility

On the question of corporate social responsibility and whether employers should be in the same boat with employees, the mild, soft-pitched union leader became a bit excited.

"We workers always want to storm past the crisis with the employers during difficult times, but this is only our wishful thinking," he lamented.

"Enterprises should set their sights beyond the financial tsunami and should persevere in their businesses, and not sack their staff as soon as the crisis occurs. Otherwise, they will lose their staff when the economy recovers," Ng said.

But some companies, he observed, for the sake of "window dressing" or furnishing better company accounts to their shareholders, sacked staff towards the end of the financial year to inflate their profits.

"Unions always hope enterprises will demonstrate corporate social reasonability, and this needs monitoring by society and the unions. In our view, profit-making enterprises that sack their staff surely lack social conscience and corporate responsibility," he grumbled.

"Enterprises did an injustice to their staff members who helped the companies reap profits by sacking them once the economic environment deteriorated, as some enterprises made unlimited expansion during the boom but sacked their staff when the economy worsened."

Heavy task

The rise to the helm of Ng, who holds first and second degrees and is now pursuing a doctoral degree in arts with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, represents the Federation's effort to create a new image of a younger leadership with higher academic and professional qualifications. Only 39, Ng is the Federation's youngest-ever chairman.

Having quit an IT training job with the Hospital Authority, he will become a full-time union leader from mid-August because he strongly feels the need to devote all of his time to the unions.

"Union activities are not held only after office hours. As we have over 200 member unions, I shoulder the heavy task of taking them forward and helping them to move to the next level," he said.

Unlike his forerunners Chan Yuen-han and Wong Kwok-hing, who are well-known "street warriors", as well as outspoken voices in the legislature, Ng amused that union activities are not purely about fighting and taking to the streets.

"Members from the clerical and professional unions seldom come to the forefront, as they do their work on other fronts such as legal services, policy research and negotiation," he said.

At present, HKFTU has four votes in the Legislative Council and their president Cheng Yiu-tong is sitting on the Executive Council. As a cabinet member, Cheng always does his very best to protect labor welfare at the highest level of the government hierarchy.

But that is still not sufficient, Ng said, because in a free economy, the government does not attach very great importance to labor welfare.

"We will keep on fighting," he vowed. "For example, the wage protection movement dragged on for more than two years before the government found that it could no longer delay the minimum wage legislation after we had pressed on for so hard."

(HK Edition 07/31/2009 page4)