The Court of Final Appeal on Sept 7 ruled in favor of the 13 defendants sentenced to short periods in prison for a violent protest at the Legislative Council Complex against the government's North East New Territories Development Plan in June 2014. The CFA judges believed the sentences prescribed by a lower court were unnecessary and set the 13 free on the spot, without overturning the guilty ruling. Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions Chairman Ng Chau-pei, who is also a Hong Kong deputy to the National People's Congress, posted a short comment on his Facebook page on Sept 10 to express his disappointment at the CFA ruling, saying it could work against the rule of law in Hong Kong.

Some of the words in Ng's comment apparently got on some people's nerves, who accused him of disrespecting the judiciary and even the rule of law. Others can only assume or guess why Ng wrote that comment because he did not elaborate on the reasoning in that short Facebook post, but in my opinion his disappointment may also have something to do with the current administration's policies concerning employer-employee conflicts, which may have left the working class at a disadvantage.

Hong Kong's economy maintained a period of relatively fast growth from the 1950s to 1980s. From an economics point of view, that period of fast growth was typical of "sacrificing equality for efficiency". In other words, it sacrificed the interest of the working class to achieve relatively fast economic growth. When Britain returned Hong Kong to China, it also left the labor-corporate conflicts to the special administrative region government.

As the SAR's chief executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor must try to resolve the two major issues of introducing standard working hours legislation and abolishing the Mandatory Provident Fund offsetting mechanism if she wants to make progress in easing employer-employee conflicts.

Regarding the first issue, the third-term SAR government, led by former CE Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, was urged by various trade unions to introduce standard working hours legislation to protect the interest of the working class. Tsang duly ordered relevant departments to start researching ways to improve the treatment of employees who worked long hours all the time. In mid-2012, the Labour Department published a report about the research. The fourth-term SAR government, led by Leung Chun-ying, formed the Standard Working Hours Committee, which proposed a working-hours-by-employment-contract solution. It would require employers to specify working hours in employment contracts for jobs that pay employees HK$11,000 or less a month, with financial compensation for overtime. The SWHC also proposed the government set guidelines for 11 industries/sectors over specific working hours arrangements. Leung accepted the proposals but did not have time to put them into action.

The Labour Advisory Board met on May 23 this year and discussed policies concerning working hours. The current-term SAR government has not promised it would introduce SWH legislation and only proposed working hours guidelines for 11 industries/sectors, namely, restaurants and bars, construction, cement and concrete, hospitality and travel, logistics, real estate management, printing, retail, cinema lines, public hygiene and old age care facilities. It also accepted the working hours guidelines for 11 industries/sectors proposed by the previous-term SAR government's SWHC, complete with proposed financial compensation for overtime and a review in 2023 of the practice according to those guidelines. And only then will the SAR government study how working hours policy-making should continue from there. That means the current-term SAR government will not conduct further study on working hours policy, or introduce SWH legislation for that matter.

The reason why the current-term SAR government decided to step back from instead of moving forward on what the previous-term SAR government had done concerning preparation for SWH legislation is, in its own words, a lack of public support, which is employers' support to be specific. As a matter of fact, the current-term government put SWH legislation on hold in exchange for employers' support for abolishing the MPF offsetting mechanism.

The previous-term SAR government presented a plan for abolishing the MPF offsetting mechanism one week before its term in office expired. Its main selling point is no retrospective ability, meaning employers can still offset a retiree's severance pay or long-service pay against MPF balance before the day the ban on the MPF offsetting mechanism takes effect; meanwhile, after the new law becomes effective, employees' severance pay or long-service pay will be significantly reduced. The government, on the other hand, will share part of the financial burden of severance pay and/or long-service pay with the employers for 10 years after the new law takes effect.

The current-term government put forward a preliminary plan for abolishing the MPF offset mechanism on March 29 to representatives of the employers and employees for their opinions. This preliminary plan kept the basic methodology of the previous-term government's plan of the same purpose but significantly increased financial support for employers. It should be noted that the government expected the MPF offset mechanism to be abolished in 2022, when its term in office ends. That can be understood as the government expects a lot of difficulties or it wishes to take its time on this issue. The government could have secured a much earlier deadline had it offered more financial support to small- and medium-sized enterprises.

The government has left people with the impression it has created a dilemma for itself, because neither the employers nor the employees are happy about the preliminary plan but the latter much more than the other side. Some employers may think the financial support promised by the government won't be enough to help them; and the employees think they would get nothing because the MPF offset mechanism would still be around for years while the SWH law is shelved indefinitely. Such an outcome cannot bode well for Hong Kong society or the SAR government in the long run. I hope CE Carrie Lam's new Policy Address will come up with decisive measures to tackle those employer-employee conflicts.

(HK Edition 09/19/2018 page8)