Ah Yan has been the CTU officer responsible for the Government Mod 1 Staff General Union (Mod 1 union) since 2001. She and her union were active in organising the historic civil service march of over 45,000 workers July 2002. The massive march was part of the struggle to head off the government’s attacks on pay and conditions by reducing wages without full and proper negotiations with the civil service unions.

        The Mod 1 union was established in 1994 and has almost 1,000 members. All members are employed by the government, mostly working in cleaning jobs, parks and gardens, and janitors. Most of the employees are women workers aged between 35 and 50 years old. The dual roles that many of them undertake as workers and mothers make them especially vulnerable to exploitation. The top wage a Mod 1 union member can earn, after many years of service is HK$10,000 (US$1,282) which, as A Yan points out, is barely enough to feed a family of four.

       Despite the great march of 2002, the government has continued with its plans to outsource civil service jobs and has added two voluntary retirement schemes to its job destruction arsenal. Over 10,000 jobs have been lost. A Yan told Union Action that these cuts are not just an attack on the lowest paid civil service workers but also on the quality of service that the government is obliged to provide for its citizens. The people who really gain are the bosses of private contractors who employ workers on far inferior contracts to unorganised workers that offer no security, extremely low pay and rarely any pension insurance.

       A Yan told us that despite the fact that outsourcing and early retirement will continue to have a negative impact on union organising, she believes her union can still meet the target of increasing membership to 2,000 workers by 2005. The union will continue to counter the government’s early retirement propaganda and also with efforts to raise trade union consciousness among the workforce. No easy task considering Hong Kong consistently rates as one of the unregulated investment environments in the world!