Anti-government activists’ plan to win key Legislative Council seats in 2020 elections suffers blow as minister reveals huge backlog to trade union approvals
- Campaigners hoped to reverse pro-establishment dominance through proliferation of new trade unions, as applications rise from one in June to 978 last month
- But minister warns only a fraction will be approved in time for September’s polls
Hong Kong has been flooded with applications to form trade unions, but the vast majority will not be approved ahead of this year’s Legislative Council elections, the city’s labour minister has warned in what could scupper an anti-government plan to win key seats.
Law Chi-kwong said 1,578 applications were received in the first three months of 2020 alone as he indicated only 160 of those filed since November would be green lit by the end of April, after which the bodies would not secure voting rights for their members in the election.
The number of trade union applications had increased from one in June last year, to 109 in December, and 978 last month, according to the Registry of Trade Unions. Between January and March this year, 1,578 applications were received.
“The figures compared with 16 in 2018 and 142 in 2019, roughly a hundredfold and tenfold increase respectively,” Law said in his official blog, adding officers usually handled 10 to 30 applications a year.
“If we were to handle the applications with the usual practice in the past, it could possibly need to take 50 years to process all the new applications received in the first three months of the year.”
