Chapter 60 chapter eight

On June 18, 2006, many company employees in Hong Kong got off work, and everyone exhorted each other more than usual: "Remember, go out early tomorrow morning, the bus drivers are going on strike." My husband came home in the evening, and I was cooking. He put down his bag and yelled at me in the kitchen: "Hey, did you hear that? Is there an interview tomorrow? If there is, remember to leave early. The bus drivers are going on strike. There are few cars on the road. Even if there are, maybe they will be able to drive." Like a snail!" I didn't stop what I was doing, and although I promised "I heard it", I wondered in my heart whether it was "wolf is coming" again this time?Strikes are nothing new to the capitalist society. A few days ago, Hong Kong bus drivers complained about the low wages. This kind of protest did not call for a day or two, but how could they really move? "Really"?Are you really going to paralyze the traffic in the whole city?

However, I couldn’t believe it. From 10:00 am to 12:00 am the next day, more than 6,000 bus drivers in the four bus branches of the Hong Kong Motor Transport Federation of Trade Unions really started their strike. In the words of the author, it is not called a "strike", but "work according to the rules". What does "work by chapter" mean?It is a veritable "passive sabotage": all buses do not stop, but deliberately slow down. There are three methods adopted: first, "skid the side" (keep left during the whole journey); The train" (let passengers board and disembark only when they reach the platform); third, "do not climb the head" (do not overtake).Since the plan was "known to every household" in Hong Kong on the first day, the citizens spent a night digesting it, and they have already understood that the bus driver's "working according to the rules" is not sincerely trying to make life difficult for the citizens. During the protest, they did not forget "benevolence and righteousness" The purpose of "slow driving and slow driving" is to prevent the common people from having no cars.Of course, if this mild form of "struggle" cannot be exchanged for the employer's salary increase plan, the bus union has other plans, and its actions will be escalated in the future. In the end, the possibility of a "full-time strike" cannot be ruled out.

On June 19, Hong Kong buses formed long queues on the main roads. I have no way of judging how the situation will develop next.The trade union pointed out that Hong Kong’s economy has improved significantly in 2006, but the income of bus drivers has not improved, and the living standards of employees are actually declining; Good times", but rising oil prices and tunnel toll increases have caused the company's operating costs to rise instead of falling, and it is not easy to raise salaries for drivers.Therefore, the labor and management sides confronted Maimanger, no one would give way, and several rounds of marathon negotiations had already been carried out before the strike.

However, a labor war that seemed to be on the verge of breaking out, after tossing for less than a day, suddenly died down, turned around, and the imminent bus strike was quickly resolved in less than ten hours under the intervention of the government and the mediation of various parties in the society. A bus union reached an agreement with the management on the issue of salary increases. Nearly 20,000 employees finally won a salary increase of 1.4% and 1.8%. With a compromise attitude.In this way, after the initial results were born, both sides showed that they did not compete temporarily, and they both expressed that they did not want to cause inconvenience to the general public, and they were even less willing to create traffic problems and make the outside world feel turbulent about Hong Kong.

I have been in Hong Kong for nearly three years. To be honest, I have not seen a real collective "strike" in this society. Therefore, it is a bit "disappointing" that Hong Kong is anticlimactic this time.However, in order to let me "feast my eyes", if I exchanged the result of the traffic paralysis in the whole city of Hong Kong, I would not bear it 100%, but through this incident, I quietly saw a kind of power, the lower class workers in Hong Kong society This kind of power can easily make people think of the masses, the masses, the water that carries boats and the water that capsizes boats, etc. Then a question slowly emerges in my mind, which is: Who will be the "ruler" of Hong Kong society? call the shots”?government?citizen?If the government is the real "master of the country", then I have seen many cases of ordinary people subverting the government's behavior in Hong Kong in the past three years; but if it is the citizens, how much right do the general public in Hong Kong have?Does the government really base everything on the demands of the citizens?How do Hong Kong's legal checks and balances and the basic framework of democracy operate and reflect?

The further down the problem is, the stronger the taste, but the result is also more complicated and scattered...