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This qualitative historical labour law Template was designed as part of the Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project titled: ‘Legal Origins: the Impact of Different Legal Systems on the Regulation of the Business Enterprise in the Asia-Pacific Region’ (DP1095060).The material is arranged in chronological order for legal changes relating to five main variables (forming and ending employment, organisation of work, minimum work entitlements and social protection, voice and representation and enforcement and regulatory agencies) with their respective sub-variables. The Template includes explanations as to the reasons for each legal change and the outcomes of that change where information is available. A Bibliography is provided at the end of the document.This Template completed for Hong Kong is intended to be a working resource document and it will be updated periodically. This version of the completed Template for Hong Kong covers the period 1844 to 2012.

In the orthodox Marxist view of society, trade unions are perceived as being generated as a reaction by workers seeking to organize themselves against the forces of capitalism, their employers. Wor...

This article examines how management-labor relations and labor legislation have evolved in China since Deng Xiaoping's “Open Door” reforms were introduced in 1979 and how they have changed over the two decades since then. We reconsider the role of Chinese trade unions, enterprises and the state agencies involved, as they move from an employment system that was once called the “iron rice bowl” to a new one based on market forces. This change raises serious dilemmas and issues: are there contradictions between preserving workers' rights and at the same time, enhancing productivity? Does such a transition constitute the onset of “collective bargaining” and a labor-market in the Western sense? How are such shifts likely to be affected by China's entry into the WTO in late 2001? These and other related questions are analysed in the article.

(2002). Psychic Distance and Internationalization: Evidence from Hong Kong Firms. International Studies of Management & Organization: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 36-56.

This article traces the evolution of Hong Kong’s labour administration since the Second World War. Given the British “voluntaristic” tradition in approaching labour law and industrial relations, the Hong Kong government has historically been less than interventionist in labour sector activities. In recent years, the government has adopted increasingly interventionist policy measures in such areas as manpower training and wage regulation. These are, however, fragmentary, sporadic, and retroactive in nature. Although a tripartite machinery for labour policy consultation and formulation has already been in existence in Hong Kong, it is nonetheless sustained feebly in a docile fashion under the auspices of the Labour Advisory Board. There is hence a case for this system of “tripartitism” to be revitalised and upgraded in order that labour administration can become a more creditable and integrated aspect of the government’s long-term agenda on public and economic policies. The need for such a policy strategy l...

This paper addresses the issue of cultural adaptations and diffusion for managerial strategies in host societies to which work enterprises are not indigenous in terms of their capital and management or either. With illustrations drawn from a series of case-studies of work organisations in Hong Kong managed respectively by Chinese, British and Japanese capital, there was an appearance of support for the thesis of ‘cultural’ determinism and its implications for strategical adaptations in work organisations. The implication was drawn that the Oriental nexus of altruism, trust and subtlety could be rooted in the more laudible and perhaps global influence of Confucianism. Some subsequent issues are raised. First, the problem of cultural adaptation is not specific to multinationals or foreign firms visiting from outside but also applies where the management and their ethic background are not indigenous. The other issue is the extent of cultural adaptation within work organisations, as determined by the degree of affinity with a common mother culture. The paper suggests that a common denominating mother culture can serve a strategical starting point to bring about intra-organisational and organisation-society link and harmony. Cette etude aborde la question des adaptations culturelles et de la diffusion des strategies administratives dans les societes hotes ou les entreprises de travail ne sont pas indigenes. Partant d'illustrations tirees d'etudes de cas d'organisations de travail de Hong Kong administrees respectivement par des capitaux chinois, britanniques et japonais, un appui est trouve pour la these du determinisme ‘culturel’ et ses implications pour les adaptations strategiques dans les milieux de travail. Nous en sommes venus a la conclusion que les traits orientaux d'altruisme, de confiance et de subtilite pouvaient ětre enracines dans l'influence la plus louable et sans doute la plus globale du Confucianisme. Quelques questions supplementaires sont abordees. Premierement, le probleme de l'adaptation culturelle n'est pas specifique aux firmes etrangeres ou multinationales, mais il s'applique egalement lorsque l'administration et ses racines ethniques ne sont pas indigenes. Une autre question est l'etendue de l'adaptation culturelle a l'interieur des organisations de travail, tel que determine par le degre d'affinite avec une culture d'origine commune. Cette etude suggere qu'une culture d'origine peut servir de denominateur commun et de point de depart strategique pour faire ressortir les liens et l'harmonie a l'interieur des organisations ou entre l'organisation et la societe.

This paper attempts to sketch a longitudinal profile on the evolution of a working class in Hong Kong context in light of the thesis of embourgeoisement. The increasing economic affluence in the 1980s and early 1990s appeared to have bred an optimism in society that the members of the working class were converging in life-style and consumption behaviour with the middle class in a process of embourgeoisement. However, the thesis of embourgeoisement comes under question again around the turn of the millennium in the advent of globalisation and the successive waves of recession that afflict Hong Kong. The vicissitudes of capitalistic competition, leading to business restructuring, corporate down-sizing and other austerity prescriptions of labour cost-saving, popularise the practices of flexi-hiring, atypical employment, outsourcing, labour shedding and retrenchment. The upshot of these austerity exercises has been the re-casualisation of the labour market and the emasculation of the employment and income security of a growing fringe of peripheral workers vulnerable to industrial deprivation and exploitation. As a consequence we now see a new industrial proletariat or urban sub-class emerging in post-industrial Hong Kong. Its “embrace” as a hybrid working class transcends a spectrum of blue-collar and service occupations. Because of the diversity in its composition, the prospects for a solidaristic working class to emerge are again remote. And the role of the trade unions in providing an effective leverage for uplifting and protecting their position is limited, as illustrated by the “impasse” now still looming over the proposed enactments to prescribe a minimum wage level and standard work hours.

This chapter attempts to explore the strategic implications of enterprise reform that have been undertaken at three major Chinese firms in the context of the recent wave of nation-wide policies aimed at promoting market socialism and China’s projected entry into the WTO after the year 2000. These high-profile efforts have been directed at the national goal of building a market-oriented economy with Chinese characteristics (Child, 1994; Warner, 1995). The overall strategy, prescribed by the state, attempts to emulate the practice of the capitalist system known as marketization, which it hopes can still be accommodated within a doctrinal framework that still enshrines socialist principles (see Fortune, 1999). This hybrid blending of dialectical oppositions, between capitalist and socialist practices, is novel but has to date proved to be a workable piece of social experimentation at the wider level of the national economy. It is hence interesting to ascertain whether at the microlevel of the individual enterprise and workplace, such a fusion of the antithetical assumptions and practices of capitalism and socialism has been pursued with similar prudence and apparent success.

Since the economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping since 1978, China has been gradually introducing greater flexibility into its factormarkets. Previously, under the pre-reform employment system, for example, workers were assigned to enterprises by state labour bureaus. Now, a nascent labour market is evolving (Ng, 1995; Warner, 1995; Ng and Warner, 1998). China’s industrial relations were once only weakly comparable to those in other countries, such as in Western economies or those in Asia. Today, its labour-management relations and management of human resources are increasingly subject to outside influences (see Warner, 2000, in press).

Power supply has been one of the key public utility industries in Hong Kong, as protected by official franchise granted by the government for regulating and controlling entry. It is the purpose of this paper to explore and investigate how the impending advents of 'market de-regulation' have affected people management and employee perception within two monopolistic power plants in Hong Kong. The authors have postulated and illustrated empirically the strategic role played by enhanced activities of human resource management and employment practices in the process of corporate renewal in face of the challenge of escalated business competition in the power supply market.

Historical development and economic and social setting institutional framework freedom of association and workers' and empoloyers' organizations collective bargaining and industrial conflict workplace industrial relations working conditions and wages women and young workers, subcontract labour and homeworkers and "social wages" foreign investment and some current industrial relations issues. Appendices: wage negotiation in Hong Kong international labour conventions on which a declaration has been made for Hong Kong by the government of the United Kingdom.