HK talks to take place ( latest )

The fifth round of negotiations is set to take place today to try to resolve the strikes and protests at the Kwai Tsing in Hong Kong and at the Cheung Kong Centre – troubles have been going for five weeks now.

Later today, the unions will be meeting for negotiations with Everbest Technologies Ltd and Hong Kong International Terminals (HIT), the subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL) which operates the Kwai Tsing terminal.

Meanwhile, a court hearing regarding the injunction to block strikers out of Cheung Kong Centre is due to take place tomorrow. If the injunction is authorised as expected, the protesters will need to cancel its planned protest for tomorrow and shoulder any fees if they lose the legal case.

HWL accused union workers of “harassing” customers at the Harbour Grand Hong Kong hotel earlier this week.

But the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) says that this was a smear campaign by the operator to portray the strikers as trouble makers instead of coming to the table to deal with the labour dispute.

Chan Chiu-wai, organising co-ordinator, pointed out to Port Strategy: “The protest at the Harbour Grand Hong Kong hotel was one of the support actions which was initiated and organised by local citizen groups rather than the strikers themselves.”

HKCTU says it is not threatened by the tactics and will continue the dispute until they reach an agreement with employers over pay, hygiene facilities and the need for longer breaks.

Meanwhile, 60 stevedores hired by ComCheung are still protesting this morning at Terminal No 4 and 7 – they want the management services company to join the negotiation.

The troubles continue to hurt both the workers and port operations and it has the potential to do much more damage.

A lot depends on the outcome of the talks today – Hutchison told Business Week that it has received outside interest for the striking dockworkers’ jobs.

Hutch port boss weighs into docker strike

Agenda-driven unions are working hard to ignite public support for the striking Hong Kong container handlers, but no one really seems to care.

Hutchison Port Holdings is not accustomed to being in the public eye. As the world’s number one container port operator, HPH has been happy conducting its business quietly and under the media radar.

In the past, attempts to elicit comment on various issues of the day were traditionally met by the response, “we don’t comment on operational or commercial activities” by the local spokesman.

However, the dockworkers strike at HPH’s Hongkong International Terminals has forced the company into the unflattering glare of the media spotlight.

For more than a month the strike has dragged on, gleefully chronicled on the front pages of the city’s English and more vigorous Chinese press. With a pro-Beijing and a pro-democrat union involved, politics quickly took over from dockworker demands for an obviously unattainable 20 percent salary hike.

Strikers are now camped outside Hutchison Whampoa boss Li Ka-shing’s headquarters in Central and protesters have been milling around outside his house and at Hutch retail stores about town.

The public nature of the strike has forced usually taciturn HPH to adopt a more public stance. It came in the form of full-page statements that have carried in the local press over the past couple of weeks, with the font considerately enlarged for the convenience of the reading public.

But yesterday saw the rare appearance of an old media “friend” on the Op-Ed page of the South China Morning Post. The long-serving Hutchison Port Holdings group managing director John Meredith weighed in with his take on the strike, castigating the “dangerous and deceptive” actions of Hong Kong’s Confederation of Trade Unions.

Meredith can be an irascible fellow at the best of times, but the unions and the striking workers have obviously poked him with a stick. He accused the union boss of a “Cultural Revolution” style attack on Li and political grandstanding instead of serving worker interests.

Meredith warned of a more serious problem, one that we have highlighted in previous blogs on the subject. Transhipment cargo does not have to go via the port of Hong Kong and if shipping lines decide it would be a lot less hassle to send and collect cargo elsewhere, goodbye Hong Kong.

Meredith said transhipment containers account for 70 percent of Hong Kong port business, which is the first time we have heard such an amazingly high percentage used and it means the port is in more trouble than everyone thinks. Direct exports from South China have been declining steadily since comprising more than 60 percent of HK throughput in the early 2000s, but it seems the port is almost at a Singapore-style transshipment-dominated status.

That may be good for Singapore in its strategic geographic location, but transshipping through Hong Kong makes sense in transpacific trade that originates in Vietnam, the Philippines and maybe Thailand. The majority of North Europe and Med containers from China will not go via Hong Kong. And remember that transshipment boxes bring to a port 30 percent of the economic value of direct exports, so competing for transshipment cargo is like magazines trying to boost online advertising at the expense of print ads – the accelleration of an inevitable decline.

Meredith is correct in warning the strikers and unions that they are risking Hong Kong’s competitiveness, but this was happening long before workers designed posters of tycoon Li with bloody fangs and marched around chanting ridiculous slogans like "Li Ka-shing igores the lives and deaths of others".

The truth is, no matter what the strikers or Hong Kong’s container port operators do, containerised cargo will continue to go elsewhere. 

Press invitation from the Union of Hong Kong Dockers

3 May 2013

Press conference: FNV (Federation Dutch Labour Movement) delegation solidarity visit at Kwai Chung terminal for striking dock workers

Date: May 4, 2013 (Saturday)
Time: 1800

There will be a solidarity meeting with strikers and interviews with FNV delegation including Mr. Niek Stam of FNV Bondgenoten trade union and Mr. Ron Westerbaan who is the vice chair of HPH Europe Container Terminal union will be offered. Members from the media are invited to this event.