The Coming Battle

[AllWobbly]

Originally Posted by Progress Wanchai

Controlledrest,

You still don’t quite get it. It doesn’t matter what the HKAOA voting rules are, your conditions of service in Hong Kong can only be altered with your consent. There is no collective bargaining in Hong Kong.

What the HKAOA has historically tried to negotiate on behalf of its members are Agreements. There’s virtually none of these left.

What can be altered on the company’s whim is company policy. The failure of the HKAOA (both the leadership and the members) is allowing so many contractual agreements to become company policy. That’s the price we pay for putting an emphasis on a monetary figure with less weight on the benefits of an agreement.

So back to the original “battle” issue.
In the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld. There’s known known’s, known unknown’s and unknown unknown’s.
After negotiations in 2017 a known known is that the company is more than happy to slash Hong Kong housing, provident fund and schooling if market forces and/or financial difficulties warrant it. They can do this with the stroke of a pen.
That being known, how responsible will it be for the TU leaderships to recommend taking a base (the threat carries no weight if the company knows it’s baseless) their members don’t want onto an unknown remuneration package? (The known unknown).

Here’s a direct quote from the employment ordinance website re varying contracts

Under the Employment Ordinance, the five valid reasons for dismissal or variation of the terms of the employment contract are:

1. the conduct of the employee;
2. the capability or qualifications of the employee for performing his work;
3. redundancy or other genuine operational requirements of the business;
4. statutory requirements; or
5. other substantial reasons

It depends whether one thinks grounding almost all of the fleet is a ”substantial” enough reason to vary a contract or that ” requirements of the business “ are such that the company could justify it.

I guess the only way to find out what it really means would be to run it by an employment lawyer or test it.