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Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung. Photo: Nora Tam

Labour chief urges six employee representatives not to quit talks on standard working hours

Labour minister Matthew Cheung Kin-chung yesterday urged the six employee representatives who have quit the committee on standard working hours to change their minds and look at the “big picture”.

He made the remarks a day after the six unionists decided to step down, accusing employers’ representatives of insincerity three years after the committee was set up to regulate hours.

“I am very disappointed about their decision. I find it very regrettable,” Cheung said.

“In the past three years, the standard working hours committee has done a lot of work ... we have entered a crucial juncture as the committee is organising a last round of consultation in the next few months. The committee has an open attitude and it does not rule out any possibilities.

“In the end, we respect their decision but we still hope they will reconsider and thus change their minds. Take the big picture into consideration. In a few months’ time, when the consultation is completed, the committee will compile a report. We want the report to have more voices from the labour sector.”

The six union representatives stormed out midway through a committee meeting in November last year and have boycotted meetings since then.

They complained that the six employers’ representatives refused to support legislation to make it mandatory for bosses to pay their staff overtime after working beyond a certain number of hours a day.

Instead, the employers would only support legislation obliging bosses to state in their staff contracts the number of hours they should work and how they should be compensated. Unionists have described the contract approach as a joke as employers could choose not to offer overtime payments if employees agreed.

Unionists have been calling for a working week of between 40 and 44 hours, with workers paid 1.5 times their usual wage rate for overtime.

Yesterday, one of the employee representatives, Leung Chau-ting, said he would happily return to the committee on one simple condition – that the committee pledged to legislate standard working hours and not just the contract approach the employers had agreed.

“Otherwise, we will continue to press ahead with our demands through other means,” he said, including possibly submitting a unionists’ report listing all of their suggestions to the government.

That report, if it finally materialised, would counter the other report the committee is expected to submit to the government by November at the latest.

The six employee representatives decided to leave the committee after consulting about 300 members from different unions on Friday night.

Cheung also commented on Disneyland’s first large-scale layoff announced on Friday.

“I honestly do not want to see any retrenchment exercises going on, but I gather that in this particular case, Disneyland has given terms better than the statutory provisions,” he said.

“For example, they haven’t chosen to offset the MPF of the employees concerned.”

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