Split verdict for global publisher in rare union rights case
An employer was convicted 10 September 2026 of blocking a journalist's union bid, Principal Magistrate Cheung Chi Wai David ruled, but cleared over her dismissal.
She had worked as a reporter for an international newspaper since March 2022. In May 2024 she decided to run for chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, a registered trade union. Hong Kong law makes it a criminal offence for an employer to block or punish an employee for that kind of union activity. The case is cited as [2026] HKMagC 9.
Unusually, she brought the prosecution herself. She filed it in December 2024, just ahead of the legal deadline for doing so, after neither the Labour Department nor the Department of Justice had acted on her complaint. She told the court she would have pursued it regardless of any financial settlement, because she wanted it to set an example for other employers in Hong Kong.
Once her candidacy became known in June 2024, her supervisor called and told her the role was not compatible with her job, adding that permission would have to come from the company's New York office. Days later the same supervisor texted asking her to step down from another union post she held, then told her: "you can't remain employed with us if you go ahead with this." Soon after, an HR manager put it in writing by email: "you will not receive the company's approval to pursue this role."
The magistrate found that requiring her to seek approval that would never have been granted, backed by the threat to her job, was enough on its own to count as blocking her from taking union office, whether or not the threat was ever carried out. He noted that the company's own written explanation to the Labour Department had effectively conceded what happened.
The second charge concerned her dismissal on 17 July 2024, which she said was retaliation for the same union activity. The employer argued her role had been cut as part of a genuine, company-wide restructuring that moved the newsroom's centre of operations from Hong Kong to Singapore. Seven other employees had already been made redundant in one batch that June, each given a month's notice; she received no notice and was let go immediately, more than six weeks later, with pay in place of notice.
The magistrate accepted that paying in lieu of notice was a normal option for any Hong Kong employer, and that spreading redundancies out over time was ordinary business practice. He found the roughly one-month gap between the union dispute and her dismissal was not, on its own, enough to prove beyond doubt that the two were connected, especially since the wider restructuring was not in dispute and her role was never filled. She had told the Labour Department in her own statement: "I understand that the Company has not recruited anyone to replace me." On that charge, the employer was cleared.
The union-interference offence carries a fine of up to HK$100,000. Sentencing on that count is due to be handed down separately.
