Leung Fong

To make all workers of Winner Garment work within the same working hours, the factory hired shuttle bus from Yam Sik Ng Motor Company to take workers to work.  The workers had to pay bus fare when they got on the shuttle bus.  The shuttle buses were originally a cargo vehicle with a carriage at the back. It was converted into a shuttle bus by fixing a row of wooden seats along each side of the carriage with a canvas cover on the top.  At that time, there were routes running through Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po, with only one or two stations in each district.  To encourage workers to go to work on time, the factory introduced the attendance bonus, which was calculated once in every 15 days.  A worker would receive a day's wage as incentive if he or she had not been late in that 15 days’ period.  If workers were never absent, did not take annual leave, and went to work punctually every day, the factory would award them with another annual prize. 

Leung Fong said that the workers had their lunch in several ways.  The factory supplied food and delivered meals to the factory for the workers.  A space similar to a pantry was created inside the plant where workers could use their lunch.  In addition, a restaurant in Ming Lun Street rented a floor in a building to run it as a canteen.  Leung Fong would go there at noon with fellow workers for lunch.  The restaurant offered a monthly meal plan, charging around $1.21 per meal.  A bowl of beef rice cost eighty to ninety cents in those days.  Every time the workers went to the restaurant, they had to tell the number of people to be served.  Usually, five to six people shared a table.  Due to a shortage of space, single persons were not welcome. 

Along with the several waves of transformation within the garment industry over the years, the union for garment workers had changed its name several times.  Originally, it was called "Undergarment Workers Union".  Leung Fong explained that undergarment was generally misunderstood as underwear. As westerners always put on suits on the top layer, the clothes under the suits were named as “undergarment”. Actually undergarments mean all kinds of clothes except suits and jackets. Later on, the union was renamed "Sewing Trade Unions" and then "Garment Trade Union".  Eventually, it becomes the present "Garment Fashion Practitioners’ Association".  Any manufacturing workers of shirts, trousers, shoes, buttons etc. were qualified to join this union.  

Leung was a union member back then when he worked for Winner and has been a member of the union for more than 50 years.  After Leung became a union officer, he helped to collect membership dues from his fellow workers and hold activities for them.  He worked jointly with several other officers to collect membership dues from factories, and sometimes visited the workers’ home based on a records of payments by members’ .  Trade unions also arranged the sales of Chinese New Year supplies.  When the stock arrived at the union, Leung and his colleagues would bring it back home and then carry them to the factory the next day to sell them to the workers.  Later, when Chinese Products Emporiums gained popularity in Hong Kong, many workers no longer bought supplies from the union.  Today, the union was not engaged in such activity anymore. 

Union members were associated by the union officers who worked in the same garment factories. It was not usual for union officers from other factories came to visit them in their factories. Occasionally workers from different factories might meet each other at lunch time if they came to have meals at union’s canteen. Therefore, the union officers had to go visit them at their homes.  Leung Fong remembers that when he made home visits, he had been to these districts:  Ma Tau Wai Village and Chun Seen Mei Chuen in To Kwa Wan,  Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po.  Most members lived in cubicle units, i.e. small compartmentalized units in an apartment of a few hundred square feet in size.  Each room had a bed, mostly bunk beds.   

At that time, Winner intended to cut the workers’ wages and the number of sewing workers was also reduced.  The workers  organised themselves to negotiate for a pay rise with the factory owner.  Leung represented the workers in the negotiation. In some cases workers were able to gain victory but in other cases they failed.  However, if the factory were insistive to go for their plans, the workers could only passively accept the reality.  The success of the negotiations depended to a large extent on who represented the factory to negotiate with the workers.  The factory was managed by factory head.  There was also a lower-rank supervisor who took charge of general affairs.  The departments, such as the buttoning department, also had their own heads.  They were the leaders that the union would meet for wage negotiation.  Sometimes the union encountered stubborn representatives who were loyal to the factory owner.  Under this circumstance, it would be difficult to find solution through negotiation and sometimes the union would call a strike.