Striking dockers set up camp on Li Ka-shing's doorstep
Strikers demanding more pay set up camp outside Cheung Kong Center and urge Asia's richest man to intervene to end three-week dispute
Striking dockers stepped up their action yesterday, moving base to Li Ka-shing's office building at the Cheung Kong Center to urge Asia's richest man to intervene.
A few hours after they set up tents outside the building's main entrance in Central, contractor Global Stevedoring Service said in a statement it "honestly cannot offer [the] 20 per cent rise" demanded by the strikers.
The dockers, on their 21st day off the job, moved their base from the Kwai Tsing Container Terminals after they failed to resolve their pay dispute at a meeting with Global and Everbest Port Services on Tuesday.
"We are besieging the Cheung Kong Center because it's time for Li Ka-shing to step in. He needs to call upon Gerry Yim Lui-fai to come out and talk to the dockers," said strike organiser Stanley Ho Wai-hong of the Union of Hong Kong Dockers.
We are besieging the Cheung Kong Center because it's time for Li Ka-shing to step in. He needs to call upon Gerry Yim Lui-fai to come out and talk to the dockers
Yim is the managing director of strike-hit port operator Hongkong International Terminals (HIT), a subsidiary of Li's Hutchison Whampoa.
The Lands Department said the space outside the building entrance was private property. Barrister Albert Luk Wai-hung said Cheung Kong could get an injunction to remove the dockers, but the firm declined to say whether it would apply for one.
