Here are 2 articles that were sent to us as updates around the strike. It is the 28th day of the strike and workers and community, youth and students continue to surround Cheong Kong Center, and did a sit in.
Stanley Ho, an organizer from the Union of Docker Workers, a part of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Union states that it is willing to negotiate the 20% pay raise the workers are demanding.
When asked whether the strikers would stage a sit-in outside Li’s Deep Water Bay house, Ho said: “This is something we can consider. It would be better if we can do it inside his house.”
supporters enter Cheong Kong Center
Docker’s supporters take protest to Li’s corporate offices
More than 20 supporters of striking dock workers went undercover to evade security at the Cheung Kong Center and take the dockers’ grievances inside the corporate headquarters of billionaire property and telecoms tycoon Li Ka-shing on Wednesday.
The protesters – including students and activists – evaded security guards on the ground floor by wearing business suits and went straight to the Cheung Kong offices on the seventh floor of the building in Central.
Once inside they unfurled banners and shouted slogans urging Li, the chairman of Hutchison Whampoa, the parent company of port operator Hongkong International Terminals (HIT) where the dockers work, to help improve the workers’ pay and conditions.
During their sit-in demonstration, the protesters denounced Li as “a businessman with no conscience” and called on him to intervene in the three-week labour dispute between the dockers at HIT’s Kwai Tsing container terminals and the contractors hired by HIT who employ them there.
The sit-in lasted for about 20 minutes and the protesters left the premises after handing a petition to a Cheung Kong staff member.
The strike by about 450 dock workers entered its 27 day on Wednesday.
The dockers are seeking a 17 per cent pay rise and better working conditions.
Three previous meeting between the workers and HIT’s contractors have failed to resolve the dispute.
About 200 of the striking workers are camped outside Cheung Kong Center.
On Wednesday afternoon, the striking workers encircled the office building and blocked its entrance.
At one point, they attempted to break through a security line to get into the building, but were stopped by security guards and police officers.
Stanley Ho Wai-hang, a strike organiser from the Confederation of the Trade Unions, said the dock workers would escalate their strike actions further if HIT and Hutchison Whampao did not respond to their demands.
Striking dockers to adjust their ’20pc pay rise’ bottom line
Wednesday, 24 April, 2013,
The union representing the 450 striking dockers says it will come up with a new bottom line in the next couple of days in a bid for a “breakthrough” in the workers’ weeks-long walkout.
Speaking after a three-hour meeting with half of the striking dockers on the 27th day of the industrial action yesterday, Union of Hong Kong Dockers spokesman Stanley Ho Wai-hong said the union had yet to come to a decision on the new bottom line, but it would definitely be a “two-digit number”.
“It could be 11 per cent or 19 per cent,” Ho said. But the contractors had to offer much better benefits, he added.
“The dockers want to show a sign of sincerity and hope there will be a breakthrough. They want the public to know they want the strike to end, too.”
The strikers had been demanding HK$100 more for each shift they worked, meaning a rise of about 20 per cent.
Ho said they also had plans for further action that would take the form of sit-ins and protests in places other than their current strike base at the Cheung Kong Center in Central.
The Center is the office of tycoon Li Ka-shing, whose Hutchison Whampoa is parent company of the strike-hit port operator Hongkong International Terminals (HIT).
Asked whether the strikers would stage a sit-in outside Li’s Deep Water Bay house, Ho said: “This is something we can consider. It would be better if we can do it inside his house.”
Separately, HIT placed its third advertisement in several newspapers yesterday, saying it had to deliver “the truth behind distorted remarks” made by the strike organiser earlier.
HIT said the advertisement placed by the strike organiser on Monday was “misleading” and was in need of clarification.
It criticised the union’s advertisement for misleading the public by saying that Hutchison Port Holdings – which HIT is under – made HK$780 million in profits last year.
HIT clarified that the amount of profit was from all the 52 ports in 26 countries under Hutchison Port. HIT’s profits were less than a tenth of that amount, it said.
All On the Same Ocean 同一个海上 