The following are not the main points of the sharing, rather they are only my concerns and need not be important from a labour right and industrial action perspective.
1) Some dock workers did work shifts of up to 72 consecutive hours. But they might work 4 hours and then go to rest for another 4 hours, after that they have kept on working. So they couldn't leave the port and go back home.
2) Many workers are employed by subcontractors. Subcontracting is just a headcount business, they need not purchase equipment and pay for the fuel cost. They simply hire workers and let them work, in return, they get fees from the port operator. So, even though reducing headcount with total fixed labour hours can’t reduce total wages, smaller labour size implies less fringe benefit, such as total MPF, paid holiday and insurance of employee compensation. That was the reason why workers have to work long hours.
3) The speaker believed that the drivers of 內運車 (I suspect that is the truck which aims at delivering container within the dock) were old so as to take the advantage of avoiding the contribution of the MPF. Accidents were not uncommon and this was more critical at night.
4) Industrial accidents are common in the dock and subcontractors couldn’t arrange insurance of employee compensation as time went by as there were too many claims and no insurer would accept the business of the subcontractors. Then these subcontractors winded up and set up other subcontracting companies to keep running the headcount business.
5) Some crane operators were hired by the port operator instead of by subcontractors. These workers have better paid and the union they joined was Federation of Hong Kong and Kowloon Labour Unions (勞聯) which routine role was to provide entertainment as per the speaker. At the time of the strike, some subcontracted workers were persuaded to be employed by the port operator so as to divide workers on strike.
6) The book of the dock strike was intended to be printed by China printer but they then changed their mind even though that was 2013. Finally, the books were printed in Taiwan. The speaker planned to sell the books on 1st July at street, but they got no books for sale, rather they sold the book coupons which can be redeemed to get the book later.
7) At the book fair of that year, they were the only exhibitor which sold one book only. In order to save the rental cost, they rented a booth that was not convenient for visitors and the Turkey ambassador booth was next to them. At the very beginning, the Turk didn't understand what the book referred to. Finally, they figured out what that meant and wrote "labour right" in Turkish calligraphy as a gift to the speaker.