The Labour Advisory Board on Monday approved a change to public holiday compensation, in regard to Sunday holidays at the Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival.

If Chinese New Year's Day, or the day following the Mid-Autumn Festival, falls on a Sunday, a compensatory holiday will be scheduled in lieu on the following working day.

The new arrangement is expected to come into effect in 2013 at the earliest. This will entitle Hong Kong workers to a five-day-long Chinese New Year holiday in 2013, as that Chinese New Year's Day will fall on a Sunday.

Under the current General Holiday Ordinance, the compensation leaves of the two bank holidays on Sunday are arranged on the preceding Saturdays.

Many of those who work five or five-and-a-half days a week have considered the current practice unfair.

The Chinese New Year in 2010, which also falled on a Sunday, has evoked controversy.

Chief Executive Donald Tsang promised on that Chinese New Year's Eve that the government will consider amending the rules.

Voicing on the employer side, Stanley Lau Chin-ho, managing director of Renley Watch Group and deputy chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, said after the Labour Advisory Board's meeting that the change will cause "minor loss" to Hong Kong's employers.

But he noted the new holiday arrangement will not occur very often, so neither side will be affected significantly.

Yet the both sides failed to reach consensus on whether the public holidays that fall on Saturday should entitle workers to an additional day in lieu.

Speaking on the labor side, President of the Federation of Civil Service Unions Leung Chau-ting, said, he hopes the government will consider expending the new arrangement to public holidays on Saturdays as well.

A half million employees will lose holidays under the current ordinance, he said.

Legislator Wong Kwok-kim said, the change "means little" to employees since not much change is involved, as all other holidays on Sunday, except the Chinese New Year's Day and the day following the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, already provide such compensation.

"(Public holidays that fall on) Saturdays are what really matters," he said.

Wong said it amounts to "discrimination" that statutory holidays are five days fewer than public holidays.

Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions estimated that one fifth of employees in Hong Kong work for five days a week, including 160,000 civil services employees.

The organization noted that Hong Kong is moving into five-day work pattern.

The government has been promoting the five-day work week, which was introduced into government in phases in 2006. Public and private sectors may choose whether to switch to the five-day week.

China Daily

(HK Edition 01/25/2011 page1)