Hong Kong

DECENT WORK for all

Rally for legislation on minimum wage at $33 per hour

Rally Declaration

3 October 2008

Fair wage for labour!
Wage is reward of labour. Workers should be reward for a decent life as they had contributed their hard work and sweat. Their fundamental rights should not be exploited.

Today, there are 1 million people living in poverty and 40,0000 working poor in Hong Kong. We work for the hardest everyday but our income is never enough to support our family. The SAR government ignored our difficulties and they even helped the corporate to oppress our basic rights. Hence, it has been such a serious delay of passing the legislation on minimum wage.

      After our continuous struggle, the demand of legislation on minimum wage gained strong support from the society. As a matter of fact, the wage protection campaign is a total failure after two years’ experiment. Only few companies voluntarily joined the campaign. It proved that legislation is the only way out of this issue. We would like to restate that the coming legislation on minimum wage should included two basic criteria, they are “reasonable level of minimum wage” and “universal coverage for all work” in order to relieve the worsening situation of the working poor.

At this critical moment, 34 civil organizations formed the alliance of minimum wage campaign and call for a big rally on legislation for minimum wage at $33 per hour. We strongly demand Mr. Donald Tsang make good his promises and response to our demand at the coming policy address.

Our demand:

1. Set up the legislation on minimum wage immediately
2.  The legislation should be universal coverage to all works
3. According to the average living cost, the minimum wage should not lower than HK$33 per hour
4. Mr. Donald Tsang should announce the plan of processing the legislation and its timetable

It is time for action. We will fight until we win.

5/10/2008
The Alliance of Minimum Wage Campaign