Contractors up their offer to non-striking dockers
Two contractors at the centre of a pay dispute have made concessions at a meeting with two unions representing non-striking Kwai Tsing dock workers on Tuesday morning.
The two unions – the Federation of Trade Unions and the Federation of Kowloon and Hong Kong Labour Unions – met with contractors Everbest Port Services and Global Stevedoring Service but no consensus was reached on a new contract.
Federation of Kowloon and Hong Kong Labour Unions representative Tsang Ping-fat said after the meeting that Everbest is now offering a pay rise of 10 per cent, 3 per cent of which was offered in the form of benefits, such as a year-end bonus.
This is an improvement on the 7 per cent pay rise offered by Everbest last week.
Another proposal presented by Global is a raise of 7 per cent this year, and another 5 per cent next year, Tsang said.
Tsang added that Global presented the same proposal that it did in last week’s meeting, which is a raise of about 8.5 per cent, including benefits such as a meal allowance.
One concession made at the Tuesday’s meeting by both contractors is that they would not force dockers to work overtime.
But the union and contractors have yet to discuss whether there will be overtime pay 1.5 times the current wages.
Tsang said he could not accept the proposals because his union was pushing for a 12 per cent raise.
Also on Tuesday, over 100 dockers, including several from the Maritime Union of Australia, marched from the Kwai Tsing Container Terminals, where the 450 dock workers have been on strike for 20 days, to the Labour Department office in Kwai Hing to show their support.
