A month-long strike that pitted Hong Kong dock workers against Asia’s richest man has ended with the strikers accepting a 9.8 per cent pay rise, much less than the 23 per cent increase they had been demanding.
The industrial action by 450 dockers, crane operators and stevedores was used by some campaigners to highlight the growing income divide in Hong Kong, which has double the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, of most OECD countries.
The dispute at the Hongkong International Terminals, owned by Li Ka-shing’s Hutchison Whampoa group, forced some shipping lines to divert loads to Chinese ports elsewhere in the Pearl River Delta to avoid the disruption at the world’s third-busiest container port.