Government decides to take Dickson to court, tightens rules to protect workers
The government will take former Housing Department contractor Dickson Construction to court over unpaid wages, it was disclosed yesterday.
While announcing new government measures to protect construction workers against bosses who fail to pay on time or not at all, the Permanent Secretary for Economic Development and Labour, Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, said a summons for the violation of the employment ordinance had been sent to Dickson executives on Wednesday.
'I believe the culture [of irregular payment] should be changed,' Mr Cheung said.
According to the Construction Industry Employees General Union, about 400 workers hired by subcontractors of Dickson were still owed $6.6 million. The subcontractors have claimed they had no money to pay the workers because Dickson had not paid them.
Earlier in March, Dickson settled with 61 workers it had hired directly in the Labour Tribunal and agreed to pay them a total of $896,000 in outstanding wages before the middle of June.
Dickson's building contracts in three Housing Department sites were terminated last month after the projects were delayed by more than a year. The government said the company had failed to deploy enough workers and materials.
