Labour Department

“ Others, however, who look forward to the possibility of an alliance with a reconstructed Opposition ask to be judged solely by the programme of the party which contains no distinctly socialistic item, in the popular acceptation of the term, except the establishment of a State Labour Department to which men may apply as a right for work at a minimum wage ”

“ A special board may be formed at the request of any union of employers or of workmen, or on the initiative of the Labour department. After hearing evidence, which may be given on oath, the special board issues a “determination,” fixing the minimum rate of wages to be paid to various classes of workers of both sexes and different ages in the trade covered by the determination, including apprentices; and specifying the number of hours 969 per week for which such wages are payable, with the rates for overtime when those hours are exceeded. ”

“ Many male industrial workers do not have a rest day, but it is customary to grant unpaid leave on request.
Labour Administration and Industrial Relations The Commissioner of Labour is the principal adviser to the Governor on labour and industrial relations policies. All labour legislation is initiated in the Labour Department, which ensures that Hong Kong's obligations under International Labour Conventions are observed. The organization of the department provides for four divisions: Labour Relations and Development; Industry; Employment; Industrial Health. ”

“ During the first half of the year, the Labour Department conducted 74,451 inspections and discovered five suspected violations of the Employment of Children Regulations. The regulations limit work hours in the manufacturing sector for persons 15 to 17 years of age to eight hours per day and 48 hours per week between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. They also prohibit overtime in industrial establishments with employment in dangerous trades for persons less than 18 years of age.
e. Acceptable Conditions of Work
There is no statutory minimum wage except for domestic workers of foreign origin. ”

“ Some employers provided workers with various kinds of allowances, medical treatment, and subsidized transport. The average wage provided a decent standard of living for a worker and family. Two-income households were the norm. There are no regulations concerning working hours, paid weekly rest, rest breaks, or compulsory overtime. Workweeks of up to 60 hours and more were not uncommon.
The Occupational Safety and Health Branch of the Labour Department is responsible for safety and health promotion, enforcement of safety management legislation, and policy formulation and implementation. ”

“ The Labour Exchanges have, in the face of great difficulties, performed the administration with efficiency, but no one with experience of industrial conditions during the last two years could fail to realize that the administration of unemployment insurance is not proper work to be undertaken by any Government Department. The proper function for the State is to see that all possible provision is made against unemployment but not to undertake the work itself. In 1920 a Committee of Inquiry was appointed by the Minister of Labour to inquire into and report upon the Labour Exchanges. ”

“ Protection in occupation is directed towards the personal, bodily and moral preservation of wage-earners against special risks incurred during the performance of their work. Protection in occupation is already afforded to a certain degree by Labour Insurance, in the form of Insurance against accidents and sickness.
The bodily and moral preservation of those engaged in business forms no new department of Labour Protection. It has long been more or less completely provided for by the Industrial Regulations and by special labour protective legislation in almost all civilised countries. ”

“ Take the State Department of Labour. The workmen know that it is the agency through which they may be able to get jobs. Even in 1931 it placed more than one hundred thousand in jobs. The merchant or the manufacturer in the State of New York knows that it is the agency which adjusts differences between him and his employees, and tells him specific improvements which he should or must make in order to protect the health and safety of his workers. ”

“ Article 89 Where the rules and regulations on labour formulated by the employing unit run counter to the provisions of laws, rules and regulations, the administrative department of labour shall give a warning to the unit, and order it to make corrections; where any harms have been caused to labourers, the unit shall be liable for compensation. ”

“ Convinced believers, let us assume them to be, in the principle of laissez-aller, they actually think that if the Ministry disappeared there would be an end of all intervention by Government between employers and employed. What uninformed criticism! They forget that the Home Office has control of the administration of the Factory Acts—a matter embracing working conditions and welfare of workers which goes right to the root of the Labour problem. They omit to notice that the Mines Department of the Board of Trade exercises supervision over the conditions of employment and wages of miners ”

“ The public will never know the extent to which industrial harmony in this country has been preserved on occasions of stress by the efforts towards conciliation exerted by the Ministry of Labour and its predecessor, the Conciliation Department of the Board of Trade, and sometimes under the greatest difficulties. ”

“ The administration of the Workmen's Compensation Ordinance which was enacted at the end of 1953 added considerably to the work both of Labour Officers and of the Labour Inspectorate, particularly during the early months before employers had become familiar with the routine procedure involved. In the field of industrial health a medical officer was temporarily posted to the Department for preliminary survey work. ”

“ If the labour sections of other Government departments were united with the Ministry of Labour, very great economies could be effected: factory and trade board inspectorates could be combined; health and unemployment inspectorates could also be amalgamated ”

“ The league’s idea of remedying or removing the evil was to establish a Labour Bureau on a large scale and under a responsible head, so that it might record all wage-scales mutually agreed upon by employers and workers, adjust disputes by arbitration, and obtain statistical information in regard to the labour market, and also have an agency that would be capable of drafting the unemployed to districts where they could be given work. ”

“ In case of urgent public work the District Department of Labor may, in agreement with the respective professional unions and with the approval of the People’s Commissariat of Labor, order the transfer of a whole group of wage earners from the organization where they are employed to another situated in the same or in another locality, provided a sufficient number of volunteers for such work cannot be found. ”

“ Of all the problems with which the science of government is confronted in the present and the near future, there are few in the domain of Social Policy of greater importance, or more fraught with serious possibilities in their results, than the establishment on a democratic basis, both in constitution and in administration, of the organs of Labour Protection. ”

“ In its eventual extension to household industry, the Government will however have to be allowed facilities for gradually extending its methods of administration.
The task of superintending the enforcement of prohibition will in the main be assigned to the Industrial Inspectorate. The oldest hands in any business, the “Labour Chambers,” and voluntary labour-unions, will moreover be able to lend effectual assistance to the industrial inspector or to a general labour-board. The factory list of young workers may be used as an instrument of administration. ”

“ If the individual inspectors were everywhere carefully chosen, the assembling of all inspectors for deliberation with the Provincial and Imperial Central Bureaux of Labour Protection would in nowise retard, but on the contrary would serve to promote the complete and equitable administration of Labour Protection and all forms of aid to labour. ”

“ It is true we have before us an almost overwhelming mass of material in the way of protocols, reports of commissions, judicial decisions, resolutions and counter-resolutions, proposals, petitions and motions, speeches and writings, pamphlets and books. But we are still far from having, as the result of a clear and comprehensive survey of the whole of this material, a complete theory of Labour Protection; for the political problems of Labour Protection, especially those touching the so-called Maximum Working Day and the organisation of protection, are more hotly disputed than ever. ”

“ Unemployed persons shall be assigned to work through the Departments of Labor Distribution in the manner stated in Sections 21–30.
21. A wage earner who is not engaged on work at his vocation shall register in the local Department of Labor Distribution as unemployed.
22. Establishments and individuals in need of workers should apply to the Local Department of Labor Distribution or its division (Correspondence Bureau) stating the condition of the work offered as well as the requirements which the workmen must meet (trade, knowledge, experience) . ”

“ We must have the facts before we can attack successfully the problem of unemployment. I shall also direct the establishment of labor exchanges in each municipality, if possible, again attempting to use available government personnel. Should these prove inadequate, I will ask Congress to establish an employment service in the Department of Labor. As we proceed further in our program of social welfare, such a service will be essential for purposes of certification of unemployment as well as of placement. ”

“ If the various chief branches of Labour Protection are compared with each other after they have all been examined separately, they appear to be indispensable and inseparable members of one system, for no one branch can be spared. ”

“ And indeed we must draw the limit still closer, and apply the word only to the relations between certain defined wage-earners and certain defined employers. Measures which are designed to protect the entire labouring class or the whole of industry, do not, strictly speaking, belong to the category of Labour Protection. ”

“ I will appoint a Secretary of Labor who fully supports the mission of the Department and who will protect working Americans and their families. An Obama Department of Labor will fight to protect overtime rights for millions of Americans, enforce wage and hour laws, and ensure that OSHA enforces workplace safety laws. ”

“ By this transfer the scope of the division's work was enlarged to correspond with the broad powers of the Labor Department. These were declared by Congress to be:
'to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions, and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment.'
Then its efforts 'to distribute' (that is both to supply and to find places for) labor were extended to include citizens as well as aliens; and much was done to develop the machinery necessary for such distribution. ”

“ The regulating representative organs would have full and comprehensive authority in all questions of industry, social policy, and health, and in inspection of dwellings; and the executive organs, even up to the Imperial Labour Board, might be empowered by the mere alteration of a few sections of the Bill to exercise the same authority, subject to the consent of the majority in the National and District Chambers, and eventually in the Local Chambers. ”

“ Each such council, acting through the unemployment committee, was to be bound to organize all work—manual or clerical—under its control, so as to maintain the labour demand in its district at a constant uniform level. In addition, each such council was to be put under obligation to provide every person, for whom suitable employment could not be found, with such maintenance as its medical officer of health might certify to be necessary to maintain such unemployed person and his dependents in a state of physical efficiency. ”

“ Even the Auer Motion when carefully examined—if we set aside the general eight hours day and certain special features of organisation, in particular its claim to include in its scope the whole of industry—is not really as extravagant as it appears at first sight; for although indeed it demands complete Labour Protection for all kinds of industrial work, it requires only the application of the same special measures as are also demanded in other quarters, and as I have shown to be justified, except in a few special cases where it calls for more drastic measures. ”

“ We recommend that all matters connected with the employment of labour including the regulation of trade unions, conditions of labour, workmen's compensation, safety provisions and industrial disputes should continue to be federal subjects. ”

“ For on the one hand there are wage-labourers employed in occupations not included in industrial labour in the sense of the Code, who yet stand in need of special protection from the State; while on the other hand there are bodies of industrial labourers dealt with in the Code, who do not need or who practically cannot have this extraordinary protective intervention of the State, being already supplied with the various agencies of free self-help, family insurance, and mutual aid. ”

“ Moreover, employers and Trade Unions will always agree, to the serious discomfiture of Government, on reforms of which the expenses are to fall not on industry but on national funds, but the question of such expenditure is surely one to be reserved exclusively for Parliament. The Ministry of Labour has always the General Council to consult, which represents the whole of organized labour, and the National Confederation of Employers’ Organizations, reinforced for consultation with any employers’ organizations outside that Confederation. ”