************************************
Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, on the HSBC's restructuring exercise after attending a public function this afternoon (September 8):
Secretary for Labour and Welfare: The decision by the HSBC to go for retrenchment is certainly not good news. But we understand that the decision is to be made in the context of corporate restructuring. I understand that the HSBC will handle the matter on three fronts, first of all through redeployment of staff; secondly through outplacement, particularly in terms of employment support; and finally counselling for the affected employees. I urge the HSBC to pay particular attention to take into account the sentiment of staff, in particular to try their very best to go for redeployment before retrenchment. It is very important to exhaust the possibility of redeployment first before talking about retrenching them. On the other hand, the Labour Department has been in touch with the HSBC this morning to offer proactive support, in terms of providing employment information to staff likely to be affected. As the restructuring is likely to take three years to complete, we are not talking about immediate lay off of people. It takes time. So it allows us to gather information from the banking sector. I gather that there will be new players coming into the market in the next few months. This is good news because this would create jobs in the process. To save the hassle for affected staff looking for jobs, we will gather all the information so that we can pass the information to them in terms of job matching. We will do our best to help them. In the end, we urge the HSBC to pay particular regard to the sentiment and welfare of the staff affected and to keep the adverse impact to the minimum. The economy at the moment is doing fine, the labour market is pretty vibrant and robust. As long as we provide enough market information to the affected employees, we hope that the impact will be reduced. As regard whether there is a market trend for redundancy, it appears to us that this is an individual corporate decision on the part of HSBC. We realise that in fact some banks have already indicated today that they have no plan for retrenchment and in fact some are talking about hiring extra people. So the picture in general is still fairly optimistic at the moment, fairly stable on the whole.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Thursday, September 8, 2011
Issued at HKT 19:52
NNNN
