Manajemen | Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji 2003 1 (23)

PHENOMENON OF UNION EXHAUSTION:
IS THERE A ‘THIRD WAY’ FOR TRADE
UNIONISM IN HONG KONG?
NG SEK HONG* AND OLIVIA IP**

O

ver the past two decades, Hong Kong has been caught in the various dynamism
of economic restructuring, political reversion to China and ‘late urbanism’, leading
to a new constellation of social and industrial problems, which have been, so far, inadequately tackled by the government and by private businesses. Trade unions in Hong
Kong face challenges to their conventional role, which are largely related to the rise of
atypical employment and the increasingly transient nature of the workplace as a unit of
work and employment. The present paper suggests that, in response to these adversities,
trade unions in Hong Kong have taken strategic moves. There are emerging symptoms
that the trade unions are restructuring and evolving a functional role in organising
the neighbourhood community as a type of ‘third sector’ organisation outside and in
parallel to their conventional occupational domain.

INTRODUCTION
Organised labour in Hong Kong decreased over the three successive decades
after WW2, due to many factors that have been documented in detail in the

literature (England and Rear 1981; Turner et al. 1980; Thurley 1983, 1988;
Roberts 1964; Turner et al. 1991; Ng and Warner 1998). A thirteen-year
period of political transition before the 1997 changeover of sovereignty gave
a mixed impetus to the development of trade unions, and enshrined them as
political agencies to represent the working people at the law-making assembly
(the Legislative Council). However, they remained essentially docile at the
workplace level (Ng and Rowley 1997, pp. 85–9; Ng 1997, pp. 666–8). At
present, there are signs that Hong Kong’s labour unions are developing a
functional role at the neighbourhood community level, outside and in parallel
to their conventional occupational ‘jurisdiction’ as workers’ combinations. With
increased activity in community work, these unions appear to be converging
with ‘third sector’ organisations and non-governmental agencies (NGO) located
outside public and private business domains and are performing an increasingly
crucial role as personal service providers within the post-industrial society
(Giddens 1998, pp. 80–5).

* Reader, School of Business, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, People’s
Republic of China. Email: enquiry@business.hku.hk ** Associate Professor, Department of
Management, The City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong,
People’s Republic of China.

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The above phenomenon of ‘convergence’, if placed in a theoretical perspective,
echoes the ‘third way’ thesis as an exposition of a liberal approach to the renewal
of ‘social democracy’ within the post-industrial societies of late (modern/postmodern) urbanism. The ‘third way’ thesis as a critique of post-modernity and
globalisation, advanced by sociologists like Giddens (1998, 2000), envisages
a wholistic agenda for social and political institutions to be reformed and reorganised, along a ‘mid-way’ course between the extreme alternatives of
‘American market liberalism’ and ‘Soviet-style state authoritarianism’. Particular
attention is paid to an increasingly visible vacuum of anomie and social disintegration created at the grass-roots level by the drift of ‘marketplace’ competition. Among the symptoms of such pathos are widened wealth and income
inequalities, the subdued workplace as the provider of secure and long-term
employment, the eclipse of the family, and the withering away of the welfare
state (Giddens 1998, chapter 2). Moreover, the success ethos associated with
the imperative of competition in a globalised horizon also breeds a tide of ‘new
individualism’ and ‘elitism’, accompanied by a body of assumptions and values
that sanctify images of the ‘autonomous individual’, ‘me-first’ society and

pervasiveness of a ‘me’ generation (Giddens 1998, p. 35).
The ‘third way’ thesis argues for a program of renewing and strengthening
the neighbourhood community, through sponsoring the work of ‘third sector’
voluntary organisations as a key to arresting and correcting the above drift, which
threatens to alienate the person and emasculate the fabric and integration of
society. Even the postmodern workplace has become equally fragile and eclipsed,
largely because of the popular practice of flexi-hiring (void of the parties’ mutual
commitment), habitual down-sizing and a market-sanctioned system of rewarding
for competitive competency, performance and success. The creed for elitism
and individualism, therefore, exaggerates the gap between the able and less-able,
leading to an even sharper polarisation between the rich and poor, and between
those who ‘have’ and those who ‘have not’ (Giddens 1998, pp. 104–11). The
occupational and industrial unions, alongside other ‘mainstream’ established social
institutions, like the family and public agencies (notably those organising national
health and centrally administered provident/medical provisions), are increasingly
trivialised, run-down or hived-off. Therefore, there is a need either to re-vitalise
these established ‘mainstream’ institutions or to substitute them with newer forms,
such as ‘third sector’ organisations. In this connection, a hiatus appears in the
future of the trade union institution.
There has been a global trend of trade union decline since the 1980s, especially among the industrially advanced ‘first world’ economies. Western literature

on unionism has hinted about the possibility of modern/postmodern unions
developing into community unionism as an alternative to their conventional
mission and functions. And yet, Giddens and other authors writing about the
‘third way’ have not been explicit about prospects of the trade union organisation as a potential ‘third sector’ non-governmental, non profit-making agency.
However, based on an intensive case study of Hong Kong’s largest trade union
centre and an active district-based labour organisation, the authors of the
present paper point to a possibility for trade unions in Hong Kong to evolve

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into a form of ‘third sector’ organisation in addressing the community
neighbourhood as the ‘constituency’ and focal point of their work and services.

In other words, Hong Kong trade unions can be pioneer ‘vanguards’ by experimenting and piloting with community unions to build a new model of trade
unionism. However, before presenting the Hong Kong case, it is useful to
note briefly the global phenomenon of the decline and exhaustion of trade
unions.

GLOBAL

PHENOMENON OF DECLINING TRADE UNIONISM

An exhaustion in trade unionism among industrially advanced economies
appears to coincide with the problems of stagnation experienced in these
economies during the 1970s and 80s (Hyman 1994, pp. 1–14). The decline in
the industrial strength of organised labour was largely evident in the trend of
falling union membership across almost every developed industrial nation, as
reported in a 1996 worldwide study of the problems and prospects of unionism
sponsored by the International Labour Organisation (ILO)(Olney 1996, p. 2).
It has been argued that trade unionism has become exhausted partly because
of problems that are endemic to labour movements. Mature and established trade
unionism inherently drifts towards organisational bureaucracy, even oligarchic
control, especially as collective bargaining involves expensive administrative

activity. The constant and periodical re-negotiation of the collective agreement
has not only sustained a ‘we–they’ divide and even created hostility between the
two sides, but it has also burdened business enterprises with a perpetuated upward
drift of wages and associated labour costs. Multi-unionism at enterprises is also
liable to complicate workplace haggling and breed frequent industrial strife on
inter-union rivalry for employers’ recognition (see Sisson and Storey 2000;
Marginson and Sisson 1990; Brown et al. 1995). In addition, the changing
composition of the occupational structure, with white-collar service workers
now predominating over the industrial blue-collar workers (hitherto the ‘working
class’ vanguards of the labour movement), has not been conducive to the sustenance of working class consciousness at the core of the ‘mainstream’ unionism
and its ideology.
There are also external factors contributing to the secular decline of unionism
worldwide. First, the rise of human resource management (HRM) as a popular
approach to people management at enterprises has bred a ‘counter-union’ psychology among enterprise managers (Sisson and Storey 2000, pp. 190–5). The HRM
approach emphasises both the individual person and the workplace as the
focal points for handling employer-employee affairs, and yet, it pays much less
attention to their mutual collective relationship at the industry-wide level (Storey
and Sisson 2000, pp. 245–50). ‘De-collectivisation’ and flexibility drive, coined
as strategic HRM options, also suggest escapes from the bureaucratic ‘cage’ of
union-based collective bargaining. For many of the ‘First World’ industrial

nations, it has become popular to either rationalise, deregulate or simplify the
collective bargaining institution, or to avoid and even oppose and contain it
(Storey and Sisson 2000, pp. 193–214). Such a new ethos of ‘managerialism’, as
epitomised by the HRM model, is symptomatic in the visible drop of voluntary

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union recognition extended by enterprise management in Britain (see, for
example, Storey and Sisson 1993, pp. 202–3).
At the macro level, the wider context of economic adjustments has also given
rise to new and changing perimeters affecting employment and organised labour.
Post-war Europe and America were afflicted by the widespread and lingering
effects of stagflation in the aftermath of the petrol squeeze during the late 1970s
and early 1980s. In order to lift themselves out of prolonged ‘doldrums’, there
were widespread endeavours to borrow from the late developing East Asian
nations, notably Japan, alternative prescriptions for organising work, business
and economic activities (Dore 1990, afterword) and search for new formulae and
initiatives to help revitalise and advance their lukewarm business and economy.

There followed a popular trend across Europe and America of corporate
waves directed at business and industrial restructuring, alongside efforts at
de-bureaucratisation, deregulation and privatisation of national enterprises
and public sector activities paralleled by labour market reforms.
In particular, flexi-hiring, which has been practised on a widening scale among
enterprises and economies within the ‘First World’ domain, leads to the proliferation of a variety of ‘atypical employment’ types, including part-time engagement, short-term fixed contract hiring and temporary seasonal working. The
transient nature of hiring for ‘non-regulars’ often means that these workers
lack a stable attachment to a workplace or employing unit. Such an erosion has
evidently made the ‘casual’ workforce less amenable to the organisational work
of unions. The relative growth of atypical employment has, therefore, presented
trade unions today with new challenges of membership maintenance and stabilisation. In addition, collective bargaining by unions has shifted its focus from
the industry-wide level to the workplace level, and is often obsessed with the
thorny and passive task of defending an apprehensive workforce from the perils
of ‘downsizing’––eclipsing previous endeavours at wrestling from employers
concessions on pay hikes.

LABOUR ORGANISATIONS IN HONG KONG: YESTERDAY’S
TODAY’S CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

HIATUS AND

The worldwide syndrome of union exhaustion has also affected and emasculated
the trade union system in Hong Kong. Furthermore, the challenges poised to
organised labour in this East Asian city have been compounded and exaggerated
by its complex historical background, fragmenting the pluralistic labour movement, within which, small, multiple, competing and ideologically hostile unions
have proliferated (Turner et al. 1980, pp. 25–32). Some of the key factors
helping shape the movement’s present posture are worth noting.
In the first place, an important development during this period was the
de-politicisation of the Hong Kong labour movement, which was largely the
outcome of the shift towards pragmatism in the political arena of the mainland–Taiwan tussle. As the political contests across the strait between the
Nationalists and Communists faded away, doctrinal warfare and ideological
antagonism became less relevant as a basis of popular appeal for sustaining
union solidarity and the workforce’s propensity to participate in unions.

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The weakening of the labour movement’s solidarity was evidenced by a
creeping retreat during the late 1970s and early 1980s in the waged labour
force’s union density and a decline in the overall unionised population size (see,
for example, Turner et al. 1991, pp. 55–7) (see Table 1).
This ‘de-unionisation’ phenomenon was later given a major impetus by
Hong Kong’s industrialisation and post-industrial development. Mirroring the
economy’s advances towards tertiary service production, there has been a conspicuous growth of white-collar occupations, paralleled by a retreat of the industrial blue-collar groups. Since the blue collar groups always constituted the
‘vanguards’ of the mainstream labour movement, their decline contributed directly
to the stagnation of Hong Kong unionism during the late 1970s and early
1980s. Hong Kong unionism had to wait until the pre-1997 political transition
to stimulate its shrinking membership (Turner et al. 1991, pp. 98–102; Ng 1997).
A second factor that helps explain the docility of Hong Kong trade unionism
as a workplace institution is the relative absence of a strong industrial infrastructure sustaining the functioning of trade unions in handling employment
relations at either the industry or workplace level. To a large extent, this feature
was a hangover from historical legacies. The Chinese labour movement in its
pre-war heydays embraced Hong Kong as a key bastion, but it was neither keen

nor able to consolidate a power base at the grass-roots workplace level, largely
because of its bias towards a politico-ideological mission of acting as a popular
mass organ of the leading political party (either of the feuding Nationalist and
Communist parties). This political obsession implied a traditional aloofness held
by these unions about building a collective bargaining system equivalent to those
in western industrialised economies. Instead, there is a persistence of abstention
of these ‘veteran’ unions from active shopfloor organisation, so that an established
shop steward system is conspicuous in its absence from Hong Kong workplaces.
In addition, there is an entrenched apathy by Hong Kong’s employers in
recognising trade unions’ purpose of collective bargaining. Lacking an effective
power-base anchored upon collective bargaining, the unions were limited in
articulating and protecting the employees’ interests when business enterprises at
the turn of the century began to emulate their western counterparts and launch
waves of restructuring exercises aimed at bettering their performance and efficiency. Downsizing, de-establishment, lay-offs and wage cuts were levied freely
upon the local workforce, with hardly any effective resistance led by the labour
unions (see, for example, Chan et al. 2000, pp. 88–91).
Ironically, feebleness at workplace level organisation and the absence of an
entrenched heritage of a collective bargaining tradition have bred an element of
resilience actually enjoyed by these Hong Kong labour unions. This is a strategic flexibility for averting the thorny task of defending the legacy of what has
always been the orthodox and sacrosanct function performed by western-style
business unions as collective bargaining agents. In ‘First World’ economies,
labour unions’ defence of this industrial institution (collective bargaining)
has proved to be cumbersome and costly (Wood 1998, pp. 4–6, 11–15;
Meiksins 1998, pp. 32–8). By default, Hong Kong unions may have unwittingly
harboured a key advantage by not having been caught to defend, doctrinally,

Table 1

Union participation rates (%) and membership in Hong Kong since 1975
1975

Declared union
membership

1979

1981

1983

1985

1987

1989

1991

1993

1995

1997

1999

2001

361 458 404 325 399 392 345 156 352 306 367 560 381 685 437 939 486 259 591 181 647 908 674 908 674 433 671 076
24

25

21

16

16

16.66

15.76

Source: Report of the Commissioner for Labor, Hong Kong SAR Government, various issues.

17.81

19.98

20.91

20.11

21.85

21.45

22.10

‘THIRD WAY’ FOR TRADE UNIONISM IN HONG KONG?

%

1977

383

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collective bargaining because of its historical absence. Such an ‘institutional
openness’, alongside the unions’ image as occupational communities for
members’ mutual association and insurance (Lethbridge and Ng, 1982:202-3),
can be conducive to Hong Kong’s labour unions in evolving a communityoriented role, suggesting, potentially, the work of a ‘third sector’ organisation’
on their agenda.

WHERE

ARE HONG KONG TRADE UNIONS DESTINED FOR?
OF THEIR PROSPECTS AS ‘THIRD SECTOR’ ORGANISATIONS

A

GLIMPSE

There is a propensity for Hong Kong’s trade unions to develop and evolve into
‘community unionism’ as a new form of ‘third sector’ organisation. This can be
shown by a number of endemic and contextual factors which are summarised
below.
First, as earlier noted, trade unions in Hong Kong have been free from the
constraint of the collective bargaining institution and its bureaucratic implications.
Second, the pre-1997 political reforms sponsored by the government led to a
process of democratisation and growing mass participation in election activities.
The continuation of this process has been guaranteed by the Basic Law promulgated by China in 1990 as the ‘mini’ constitution for the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region (SAR) after 1997 (Basic Law 1990; see also Ng 1998,
pp. 213–6). Trade unions in Hong Kong are encouraged by the shifting political
context of electoral advances to evolve a strategic role of organising the grassroots neighbourhood community in support of and partnership with the formal
political parties. In addition, some trade unions in Hong Kong are equipped
(as workers’ self-organisations) to perform an ‘agency’ role of penetrating the
neighbourhood community for mutual assistance and insurance. Besides, due to
the changing labour market and the subsequent growth of the self-employed,
seasonal workers and part-time employees, and those employed in other forms
of atypical employment arising from the labour market flexibility ‘creed’ (i.e. a
drift towards ‘re-casualisation’), the workplace has retreated into an eclipsed
position and become less the ‘bastion’ for labour unions to enlist and organise
their membership. Instead, the unions are now paying equal attention to the
residential community for sustaining a dialogue and liaising with their members.
This ‘lay’ approach is also consistent with the legacy of Hong Kong unions, which
have never been strong at the workplace level. Also, given their feeble industrial
strength, some ‘vanguard’ unions and labour bodies now act as the spokesperson
of workers across all trades in the neighbourhood regarding employment, wages
and labour market issues. The labour grievances which some unions articulate
are even generic and not specific to employment affairs, pertaining to housing,
transport, general price level and cost of living, pollution and environment, as
well as associated ecological issues which can affect the wage-earners’ common
well-being and position either as employees or self-employed (Ng 1997,
pp. 667–72). The agenda for these unions is to cater to the ‘working life’ betterment of the people, whether they are workplace or neighbourhood-based. They
also lobby extensively for official leverage against the industrial vicissitudes of
‘postmodern urbanism’, in the capacity as labour’s pressure groups belonging to

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the ‘third sector’ domain at a time when these agencies are expected to have a
widened scope in Hong Kong (Tung 2000. p. 33, para. 98).
Empirical evidence: Preliminary note
As exploratory studies, two case studies mirroring such a possible new trend of
Hong Kong unionism were conducted by the authors during winter 2000
and spring 2001. Because the present paper has not drawn its Hong Kong data
from a representative sample survey of statistical vigour, it is beyond its scope
to ascertain exactly the typicality of the above evolutionary tendency towards
‘community unionism’ among labour unions here. However, there are grounds
to believe that the case studies are indicative of the pervasiveness of this type
of trend in the development of unions. This is because one of the organisations
studied was the leading trade union centre within the labour movement, the
Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU), with affiliate unions organising approximately 40 per cent of the unionised population in Hong Kong
(see Table 2). The other organisation examined in this series was a ‘fundamental’
grass-roots labour body, which confined the spatial scope of its activities to a local
district. A narrative each of these two cases is given below.
Case A: Established ‘lead’ trade union centre
A ‘benchmark’ example adopted in the study was the Hong Kong Federation of
Trade Unions (FTU)––the largest and leading centre of trade unions within the
Hong Kong SAR. It now combines under its umbrella more than 150 affiliate
unions, along with a number of functional committees and essentially semiautonomous subsidiary business units. The data presented here were derived from
a number of intensive interviews with a senior official of the Federation and his
research department staff.1

Table 2 Declared membership of major (employee) trade union centres in Hong Kong,
1997 and 2000
Major trade
union centres
Affiliated
Affiliated
Affiliated
Affiliated
Others
Total

to
to
to
to

FTU
TUC
CTU
FLU

No. trade unions (%)
1997
2000
118 (21.93)
61 (11.34)
40 (7.43)
38 (7.06)
288 (53.53)
538 (100)

136 (22.90)
55 (9.26)
47 (7.91)
45 (7.58)
316 (53.2)
594 (100)

Declared membership (%)
1997
2000
260 118 (40.15)
25 438 (3.93)
91 245 (14.08)
22 468 (3.47)
254 505 (39.28)
647 908 (100)

286 904 (42.61)
19 520 (2.90)
100 115 (14.87)
28 530 (4.24)
243 397 (36.15)
673 375 (100)

Source: Annual Statistical Report, Registry of Trade Unions, Labour Department, Hong Kong SAR
Government, various issues.
Notes: CTU, Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions; FLU, Federation of Hong Kong and Kowloon
Labour Unions; FTU, Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions; TUC, Hong Kong and Kowloon Trades
Union Council.

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A number of interrelated policy themes were pervasive in the Federation’s
agenda of post-1997 adjustments, apparently for dealing with the new politicoeconomic ‘paradigm’ arising from the politics of Hong Kong becoming part of
China, and the economic integration of this ‘post-industrial’ city with the mainland ‘marketised’ socialist system. First, the trade union centre began assuming
the ‘transmission-belt’ function as a quasi-political party of the working class,
evidently after 1997 in Hong Kong as China’s SAR. As a group, it was anxious
to penetrate the neighbourhood community to gain access to the labouring mass
at a grass-roots level. Second, there was also an attempt by the labour federation
to organise the local community and address the organisational problem caused
by the en masse migration of Hong Kong factories north across the border.
The exodus of Hong Kong’s manufacturing plants and their relocation in
the mainland, almost epidemic after the mid-1980s, disrupted and purged the
Federation of its traditional base of shopfloor organisation. See Table 3 for a
profile of declining membership among some of the veteran industrial and
occupational unions affiliated to the FTU. The Federation was also keen to
compensate for this membership attrition by opening up new avenues of
enlisting new members, such as contacting and organising them at the
neighbourhood level.
The steady shift of the Federation’s attention in its membership maintenance
and liaison work, away from the workplace level to that of the residential
Table 3 Declining membership among some of the veteran industrial and occupational
unions affiliated to the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU)
Trade Union
FTU Affiliates
Hong Kong and Kowloon Spinning, Weaving
and Dyeing Trade Workers General Union
Hong Kong Wearing Apparel Industry
Employees General Union
Hong Kong and Kowloon Rubber and Plastic
Workers General Union
Hong Kong and Kowloon Fish Trade
Workers Union
Non-FTU Affiliates
Theatres and Amusement Parks
Workers Union
Hong Kong Market Workers Union
(Tung-On)
Hong Kong and Kowloon Motor Car
Drivers General Union
Hong Kong and Kowloon Restaurant and Café
Workers General Union

1991

1996

2001

10081

9033

7078

6717

6076

5612

3712

3553

3219

1064

921

840

551

385

285

250

234

85

210

103

72

13009

12955

8122

Source: Annual Statistical Report, Registry of Trade Union Labour Department, Hong Kong SAR
Government, various issues.

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neighbourhood, was also explained by other factors endemic to the changing
labour market and employment structure. These were, as noted earlier, the
growing size and importance of the white-collar service workers in constituting
union membership. And yet, they were less amenable to organisation at the
workplace level because of the nature of their work and mobility, and the
re-casualisation of an enlarging segment of the labour force, who became
self-employed, temporary employees and even part-timers without a full-time
job and a stable place of work and employment, hence, lacking permanent
attachment to any specific workplace.
In its search for a widened labour agenda devolved to the neighbourhood
community, the trade union centre has probably retreated even more from
collective bargaining activities, which have always been of peripheral concern for
most of its affiliates except for a few trades (e.g. air cargo transport and public
buses and stevedoring), and are still strongly organised at either the occupational
or workplace level. In fact, the Federation was lukewarm about the notion of
legislating on collective bargaining rights. Although it pledged nominal support
for the pre-1997 collective bargaining and consultation law, which the Hong Kong
Confederation of Trade Unions (a rival union centre allied to the democrats) and
other pro-democratic labour activists pushed through the Legislative Council
on the eve of the political hand-over, it has never been keen on reviving and
reinstating this enactment after its abrogation by the SAR provisional legislature
shortly after the change of government (Fosh et al. 2000, pp. 429–32, 439–42;
see also Ng 2001, pp. 148–50).
Later, the recession during the closing years of the last century, alongside waves
of lay-offs, retrenchment and pay cuts, would have afforded a ‘high-tide’ opportunity for the trade union centre and its industrial arm to forge and establish
‘bridgeheads’ of collective bargaining and industrial consultation arrangements
at the workplace level, especially among afflicted trades like retail services and
restaurants. However, as events attested later, workplace industrial militancy
around this period was largely feeble. Even where labour protests were organised
by the unions, the actions were typically transient, ad hoc and enterprisespecific, hardly enduring beyond the spatial and time confinement of the dispute
itself. The learning experiences accumulated from these labour struggles for
enriching the labour unions’ collective bargaining capabilities were, therefore,
limited.
Indeed, neighbourhood programs were not an entirely new development for
the FTU. The Federation formalised its agenda of community participation in
1994 together with the inception of a department specialising in district
level service provision. The Department of Community and District Services,
with a network of ten district offices, appeared to perform a ‘start-up’ role as a
‘transmission-belt’ organ largely in pursuance of China ‘one country–two
systems’ policy. For instance, the department mobilised, through its district
offices, both the members of the Federation’s affiliate unions as well as their
families in support of electoral activities for the Legislative Council and the
district boards (district councils) at the local government level. These activities
embraced actions such as encouraging and persuading the grass-roots labouring

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mass to turn out at election (implicitly, the SAR government has viewed the
voters’ turnout rate as a vicarious indicator of its level of legitimacy and popularity), as well as campaigning for candidates either nominated directly or
sponsored by the Federation.
Active participation in the SAR elections and support of the pre-ballot campaigns were heralded as patriotic acts, inasmuch as the ‘proven’ performance
of these PRC sanctioned electoral arrangements would attest to the SAR’s
democratic advances towards maturity (Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions,
1997, pp. 27–28). Such an experience would nurture and buttress the success
of the motherland’s ‘one country–two systems’ model prescription for achieving
re-unification of the nation (Ng 1997, p. 671). Another key aspect of the
‘transmission-belt’ functions of these district offices was to promote and propagate
the Basic Law and its provisions through a plurality of media channels. This
department also organised a host of workshops and seminars to help educate
the Federation’s membership and the residential neighbourhood served by
the district offices in a variety of current affairs, including understanding the
Basic Law. This type of ‘transmission belt’ activity was deemed effective for
enhancing an altruistic awareness and a feeling of belonging to Hong Kong and
China felt at the grass-roots level, especially among local workers and labour
unionists.
The above activities of community penetration are reminiscent of the quasipolitical functions of socialist unions to act as a ‘transmission-belt’, and an organ
of the state and the ruling political party for mass organisation/mobilisation. This
mission would have probably remained masked and emasculated for a combined
Hong Kong trade union like the FTU, were it not for the pre-1997 electoral
reforms which enshrined the labour unions in a new ‘realm’ of power as the representative agencies of the labour constituency (Hong Kong Government 1984;
Ng 1986, 1997). Its ascendancy in political status, alongside the 1997 political
reunification, has placed the Federation in an ambassadorial role to liaise with
the Hong Kong compatriots at the grass-roots level for their participation and
involvement in a patriotic cause, which was to support and ensure the success of
the ‘one country–two systems’ experiment (Turner et al. 1991, pp. 101–2).
The notion of ‘community-based’ unionism was also consistent with the move
of the Federation and its affiliates towards the model of ‘instrumental collectivism’.
They, therefore, acted as providers of union services to their membership
‘clientele’. This led the trade union centre to re-structure the delivery of
membership services, notably those of worker education (especially relating to
labour law awareness and knowledge) as well as grievance advice, consulting
and assistance, which has devolved to the grass-roots level of the neighbourhood
community. Where these normal service ‘goods’ became available at the district
offices, it was no longer necessary for union members to approach the regular
union office at either headquarters or branch for consultation.
An allied task of these district offices, usurping virtually the role of the shop
steward system, has been to cultivate and recruit new members. In this connection,
the Community and District Services Department of the Federation reported
that its organising work was increasingly instrumental for the intake of new

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members. Concomitantly, these offices of community and district work also
became the liaison points with the rank-and-file members, acting in a shopsteward-like role and collecting dues from union members. Table 4 summarises
the progress of such membership liaison work achieved by the department
during 1997–2000. The conspicuous growth of this kind of membership liaison
work also signalled a new strategy by the Federation to organise and penetrate
the neighbourhood community, particularly as an answer to the erosion of the
affiliate unions’ regular liaison work at the workplace level.
The Federation believed that by penetrating the neighbourhood community,
they would plant a web of ‘catchment areas’ to facilitate access to present and
potential members who were now less accessible through their place of
employment. This was largely due to the changing nature and fluidity of
industry, employing organisations and the labour market. People could change
jobs, as well as their trade skills and occupations. Moreover, it was less easy than
before to identify a specific occupation to which an individual belonged, inasmuch
as they were part-time workers holding concurrent (part-time) jobs across
different trades. Even industry, occupation and craft-based unions have become
elusive as bastions of the Federation’s affiliate support, to the extent that old skills,
trades and industries (especially production ones) were withering away. The
masked future of some of the veteran industrial unions within the FTU family
and the emasculation of workplace level union organisation have, therefore,
induced and even forced a reluctant Federation to reposition its union
membership policy and the recruitment strategy of its affiliate unions.
Case B: Grass-roots level labour organisation
The second case was a quasi-union in a community named the Alliance
(The Workers’ Rights Alliance), which was an emerging ‘vanguard’ organisation
that pledged to serve and advance the industrial interests of a local communitybased working population.2 It lacked, however, the organisational sophistication
and functional formality of the FTU, as noted earlier. Established in mid-1999
and focussing its mission and work activities upon a single district, Tsuen Wan,
it was much smaller than the Federation in terms of breadth of service,
Table 4 Membership liaison work of the community and district services department
of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions
Year

New members
recruited through
the department

Affiliate unions dues
collected by the
department (members)

1997
1998
1999
2000
2001

1499
1177
2661
2388
1884

2540
2766
3501
3513
3647

Source: The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, reports for 1997–2001.

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membership size and resourcefulness in key aspects like finance and manpower
that command public attention and political influence. However, being structurally fluid and free from the historical bonds and biases borne by the Federation,
the Alliance enjoyed a ‘lean’ advantage as a new brand of labour organisation.
Partly supported by Oxfam Hong Kong, the Alliance depended for its
manpower substantially on the services rendered by a ‘core’ group of voluntary
workers. There was no ‘formal’ registration of its members, as participants and
leaders were all lay-workers. Spatially, Tsuen Wan, the district where the Alliance
was located, was one of the established ‘vanguard’ industrial areas of Hong Kong.
It was worn and reshaped by the rapid relocation of its factories and workshops
to the mainland during the last two decades. Manufacturing works in Tsuen Wan
has, therefore, largely withered away, and been steadily replaced by service and
retail businesses that employ far fewer workers. The community is now flooded
with middle-aged unemployed, low-income workers, under-employed part-timers
and jobless new immigrants from the mainland. It was towards this marginalised
‘fringe’ of the industrially deprived in the grass-roots neighourhood community
of Tsuen Wan that the Alliance has directed and targeted its services.
A proactive approach was pursued by this ‘community’ union. The Alliance
organised ‘outreach’ activities, such as distributing promotional leaflets to
workers outside the Labour Department and conducting regular ‘on-the-street’
education and poster sessions at two ‘habitual’ spots in Tsuen Wan. The objective
was to furnish a kind of ‘face-to-face’ contact and ‘on the spot’ consultation
service to the workers. This was usually followed by an individualised package
of assistance. When needed, the ‘client’ workers were accompanied by the
Alliance’s organisers to pursue their workplace grievances and assist in activities
such as job search, job application letter-writing, job interviews, and visiting
the Labour Department and the Labour Tribunals for lodging complaints
and claims. This extensive and personalised array of services was backed by
home visits to the workers and their families, and the provision of a 24-hour
hot-line service. As a part of the Alliance’s efforts to promote a sense of
‘neighbourhood community’ among the workers, a ‘self-help’ programme was
also launched whereby unemployed workers were coached and encouraged
to offer mutual assistance to each other and help organise the activities of
the Alliance.
The Alliance was literally an ‘agency’ union. It was both ‘shapeless’, without
the conventional structure of a normal labour union and lacking any profound
membership base, as well as ‘fundamental’, to the extent that it was in touch with
everyone in its potential membership (i.e. all residents and workers forming its
‘clientele’ or ‘constituency’ in the neighbourhood). However, up until now, the
Alliance has been small in its membership and has exhibited hardly any anxiety
about widening this base. It has not, unlike the Federation, engineered any explicit
actions on membership drive. Instead, it entailed an embryonic form of ‘new
model’ unionism, performing as a ‘community’ union rooted in a local neighbourhood. In its ‘agency’ capacity, it purported to represent and deputise for the
people in the neighbourhood on any industrial grievances encountered. Besides,
the Alliance also acted as a quasi-social work agency in providing for employee
assistance outside the workplace. As a district pressure group, it also articulated

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the common labour market and employment interests of the working people
belonging to the local ‘constituency’ of Tsuen Wan. However, this labour
body has been increasingly perceived by some apprehensive unions in the ‘mainstream’ labour movement as an ‘aberrant’ entity which usurps the conventional
activities of established unionism. Future competition from these hostile veteran
organisations could be problematic for the Alliance.

CHALLENGE OF POST-INDUSTRIAL URBANISM AND ROLE OF LABOUR
UNIONS AS ‘THIRD SECTOR’ ORGANISATIONS
Limitation of the workplace ‘nexus’
The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions and its affiliates portrayed in this
paper explore an ‘experimental’ approach to building a new and alternative
membership base anchored in the neighbourhood community. This appears
to be a new membership strategy largely because of growing difficulties which
these unions have experienced in organising the workplace.
The shopfloor ‘nexus’ of union organisation recedes today as a result of the
changing character of work and employment, the most noticeable manifestation
being the rise of ‘atypical employment’ in areas such as part-time and temporary
hiring. These new forms of employment, coupled with the rise of self-employment
in industries like transport, stevedoring, hospitality and entertainment, mean that
the wage or fee-earner does not have an employer or lacks a fixed employer. To
the labour unions, these new employment groups are far less amenable to
membership recruitment, an exercise which needs to be extended beyond
the ‘domain’ of the workplace. The latter has now become less relevant as an
employing unit for casual and atypical employees.
Needs of the neighbourhood community
Also endemic to the process of ‘post-modern’ urban development are a series
of ‘disorganisation’ and ‘fragmentation’ tendencies that threaten to rupture
neighbourhood-based communities (Giddens 1991, pp. 198–9).
As a new ‘risk society’, the post-industrial neighbourhood poses an equally
strong demand for collective agencies of community hedging as its traditional
pre-industrial counterpart (Giddens 1991, pp. 28, 128). Such a role was performed
by the occupational guild fraternity during the pre-industrial period of basic craft
production. Later, in the heydays of the factory system, social work voluntary
organisations also excelled as key agencies of community integration and stabilisation. However, as the domain of work and the institution of the workplace change
in their nature, and decline in relevance to the central life interests of the
working (and labouring) individuals in an era of ‘late modernity’, these conventional agencies of community integration are emasculated and are no longer
adequate. In the post-modern context of the withering away of existent arrangements and institutions, new agencies are required. An example is a communityoriented labour body that can act as a ‘third sector’ socio-industrial agency,
catering to those who have entered or are about to enter the waged labour
market––even retired persons living on a hybrid of private and social wages,
the pension and provident fund (Bacharach et al. 2001; Mann 1998; Gapasin et al.
1998).

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Socio-economic risks also exist in Hong Kong’s ‘post-industrial’ young urban
society. In particular, the political transition of Hong Kong, the industrial drama
of China’s modernisation reforms, and the East Asian financial crisis and
post-crisis recession, combined to precipitate a series of new social and industrial
issues in the past decades and the present. Many of these problems are associated with the labour market interests, work and employment of the urban
population, especially among those located at the periphery of the labour
economy (Moody 1997, p. 282–92). Examples of these issues are the insecurity
of part-time and flexi-employment, staggering unemployment levels, low wages
and long hours of those labouring on the ‘fringe’ of the waged labour economy,
business consolidation and personnel down-sizing, involuntary self-employment
and retirement, foreign worker importation, de-skilling and problematic
retraining, and a trendy stampede for expensive adult education in the search
for competency, knowledge enhancement and credential layering. These issues
constitute a new ‘risk syndrome’ for Hong Kong and will pose a pressing case
for an agenda of effective action from the government and organised labour. To
perform such a role, labour unions can be destined as a potentially ‘third sector’
agency for pursuing a social strategy of the ‘third way’.

CONCLUSION
We suggest, based upon our Hong Kong data, that there is the potential for trade
unions, which are still largely workplace oriented, to restructure themselves and
perform the role of community unions in response to these socio-industrial
challenges of late urbanism. As an echo to Giddens’ ‘third way’ thesis, the future
unions assuming such a community role, can be located within the ‘third sector’,
outside the state and private business domains, as well as outside the conventional
ambit of any specific trades, industries or occupations.
There are, of course, problems associated with attempts to create (and recreate) a union-focused community outside the occupation. If unionisation were
to be based upon organisation of the neighbourhood community, community
unions will lack collective awareness due to a lack of common occupational
interest and identity. Instead, they could be fragmented into an ‘enclave’ of a
localised working people’s combination. These ‘combines’ are occupationally and
industrially mixed, and are pluralistic, yet isolated and segregated spatially from
each other. For this reason, the model of a ‘community union’ as a ‘third sector’
agency will be open to problems of internal organisation and integration because
it lacks the workplace ‘nexus’ of conventional unionism. Hence, it is clearly
premature to predict the future pervasiveness of this new form of ‘community
unionism’ within the Hong Kong labour movement. As it appears, it may take
years for it to crystallise into a shape that can actually eclipse the ‘mainstream’
union tradition as an effective alternative in the ‘post-modern’ age.

ENDNOTES
1. We conducted two interviews with the vice-chairman of the Federation, Mr Leung Fu-Wah:
first in December 2000 and then in March 2001. Between these two interviews, we also liaised
with the Federation’s research officers for more focussed and detailed discussions, and had
access to the reports and dossiers of the Federation where these documents were made
available to us as ‘open’ documents.

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2. The profile on the Alliance was largely based upon data that we collected from a series
of open-ended, unstructured interviews conducted with the Executive Secretary of the
Alliance during February and March 2001. We were also able to supplement the profile
with information drawn from pamphlets published by the Alliance promoting its work
activities and programs.

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