New union formation in Hong Kong 2019–2020: The state in industrial relations

Within a context of major political upheaval in Hong Kong in 2019–2020, a mass movement began a unique activism of forming hundreds of new unions. As students protested and mass peaceful demonstrations took place over the later months of 2019, traditional democratic unions joined other groups in discussing collective actions but wave of hundreds of workers began forming new unions across all major sectors of the economy. This paper explores, thorough extensive contemporaneous research, the motivations, activities and intentions of this unionisation drive as well as well as the enormous backlash from pro-government elite. The paper shows that not only the process of establishing unions helped new activists to consider aspects of workplace democracy and worker interests as part of building an alternative to authoritarianism but that it was understandably precarious and dependent on a liberal legal system that allowed authoritarian forces to end the movement quickly.