The Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) says it hopes to donate some assets to other workers’ rights groups.
The organisation is an appointed service provider for the Employees Retraining Board, with about 1,000 students enrolled.

Hong Kong’s most influential opposition trade union will instruct its auditor to appraise its assets as part of the organisation’s winding up.
Announcing the disbandment of the Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) on Sunday 19, chairman Joe Wong Nai-yuen did not give an estimate for the overall worth of the assets but said it hoped to donate some of them to other labour unions.
“We hope that would be able to help workers to get more assistance when they face [unfairness] in the future,” Joe Wong Nai-yuen said.

The HKCTU is one of the city’s two leading labour unions, representing more than 80 affiliates and counting about 140,000 members as of last month, although it is dwarfed in size by the pro-establishment Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), which has about three times as many affiliates and members.
Pro-Beijing media have accused the group of colluding with foreign forces during the social unrest in 2019, when it called for general strikes and encouraged workers to set up new trade unions to push for democracy.

The HKCTU has 15 training centres and is an appointed service provider for the Employees Retraining Board (ERB), a statutory body.
About 1,000 people are currently enrolled in around 200 training courses, according to Marilyn Tang Yin-lee, executive director of the confederation’s training centre.
Marilyn Tang said closing the training centres was “difficult and saddening” and apologised to all those affected, including about 140 tutors.
“The impact is significant. We are really sorry and we do hope that there will be suitable arrangements to minimise the problems caused to those enrolled in our courses,” Marilyn Tang. “With our training centres stopping operations, it will be a loss for all Hongkongers.”
The centres ceased recruiting new students last Friday 17 and dozens of short-term courses are expected to be completed by the end of October, she added.
For those on a waiting list, the confederation was in talks with the Employees Retaining Board to find an alternative for them.

Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong said on Saturday 18 his bureau was hoping to speed up the completion of the training classes, while possibly seeking the help of other groups to take over courses that might extend beyond the body’s dissolution.
“They have provided a lot of training classes for our ERB. Therefore, our priority is to ensure the attendees are not affected,” Law Chi-kwong said.

The HKCTU has earned the respect of many residents over the decades by taking on the rich and powerful with labour movements such as a dock workers’ strike that lasted 40 days in 2013.
But by later diverting into political activism, the union lost its focus and fell into Beijing’s cross hairs, analysts have said.

While authorities have been warning opposition unions for months they could face deregistering, the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po accused the HKCTU of pocketing money from the Solidarity Centre based in the United States via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and accused it of “colluding with foreign forces”.
The NED is funded largely by the US Congress, while China has claimed the NGO is an offshoot of the Central Intelligence Agency, a claim the NED has denied.

HKCTU chairman Joe Wong on Sunday 19 refuted the claims, saying its collaboration with the Solidarity Centre had ended by July of last year and was entirely related to labour and collective bargaining rights, as well as training for union leaders, and “did not involve any political activities”.

Chung Kim-wah, deputy chief executive officer of the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI), said the HKCTU had been a courageous defender of workers’ interests against powerful employers.
For him, the group’s most memorable movement was the 40-day dock strike at the Kwai Tsing Container Terminals. A subsidiary of Hutchison Port Holdings Trust, owned by tycoon Li Ka-shing, had outsourced workforce management to hired contractors. Striking workers demanded better pay and conditions and following the longest industrial action in Hong Kong in years agreed to a 9.8 per cent pay rise.
“We can see that the CTU has been undaunted in fighting against rich bosses for workers’ interests,” he said. “In the end, the whole movement ended in a good way with the workers getting higher pay and better welfare such as longer lunchtime.”

Lau Siu-kai, vice-chairman of the semi-official Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies think tank, said the dock strike had taken “an overly aggressive approach” in fighting for labour rights against tycoons such as Li.
“It has never narrowly focused on workers’ rights. It has hoped to push for social reforms through labour movements.”
The organisation became increasingly involved in political activism directed against the government and Beijing, especially its high-profile participation in the 2019 protests, Lau Siu-kai said.
“This has diverted from the group’s mission of fighting for labour rights and placed itself in an antagonistic position against Beijing,” he said.

The HKCTU, co-founded in 1990 by veteran labour leader Lee Cheuk-yan, is a coalition of independent and politically unaffiliated union organisations. It has a long history of aligning itself with the city’s opposition, being a member the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the group that organises the city’s annual vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and which is also disbanding.
The confederation espoused the principle of “solidarity, rice bowl, justice and democracy”.
It called for the right to collective bargaining, protection against dismissal for involvement in trade union activities, as well as democracy through civic participation.
The HKCTU was also known for successfully achieving the statutory right for labour unions to collective bargain, just days before the handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997. But just three months later, the law was scrapped by the provisional legislature dominated by the pro-Beijing bloc.
During the 2019 protests, the confederation encouraged workers sympathetic with the movement’s wider demands to set up new trade unions to bolster the opposition movement, often using worker strikes as a tactic.

Lawmaker Michael Luk Chung-hung, of the Pro-Beijing HKFTU, said labour rights could not be separated from politics but accused the HKCTU of acting against workers’ interests.
“The most obvious example is the citywide strikes organised by CTU in 2019 amid the social unrest,” he said.
Although the Pro-Beijing FTU did not see eye to eye with its rival, they did align their positions over the ultimately successful fight for a minimum wage in 2010, Luk said.

Even with its collapse, workers’ rights would still find protection, to an extent, in unions run by the pro-establishment camp, argued Chinese University political scientist Ivan Choy Chi-keung.
“But they may be less inclined to touch on certain issues or when the issues at stake pose a challenge to the government,” he said. “They are certainly less aggressive.”

Lee Chun-wing, lecturer of the division of social sciences, humanities and design at Hong Kong Community College, said he believed that the HKCTU’s downfall was its alleged ties with foreign unions.
Lee Chun-wing agreed with Choy Chi-keung that it would be difficult for the Pro-Beijing FTU to replace the confederations’ role as the former was less focused on domestic helpers’ rights and would steer clear of tactics such as strikes.
“Labour rights are important to the FTU. However, social stability is also important to them,” he said.