First-time lawmaker champions labor rights, safety nets in tech era

Upbringing plays a key role in shaping rsonal values — and that is especially the case for first-time lawmaker Lam Wai-kong, who represents the labor sector.

Born and raised in a family of grassroots workers, the unionist in his mid-40s entered his four-year legislative term with a clear goal: advocating for his working-class peers.

His priorities include leveraging legislative tools to protect digital platform workers, helping grassroots workers adapt to the disruptive wave of artificial intelligence-driven technologies, and enhancing workplace safety for manual laborers.

The son of a seamstress and a cobbler, Lam’s life story begins on a factory floor, his mother’s hands busy sewing. His teenage summers were spent working as a clothing factory storekeeper, doing delivery jobs, and later working on industrial sites.

Much of Lam’s early labor-rights work began with a stint in his mother’s union — accompanying factory laborers to register for benefits or file work injury compensation claims. Before long, he found his way into the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) and has since been on a quest to advance labor rights.

With technological advances, today’s labor force has been transformed by new trades. Yet it is stuck with outdated labor laws, he said.

Digital platform workers — such as food couriers and ride-hailing drivers — are now ubiquitous in daily life. Official data put their number at 12,900 as of March 2024.

Vowing to explore legislative means to better protect the group, Lam said that they — often classified as “self-employed” by law — are excluded from essential benefits and safeguards that other contract workers receive under the Employment Ordinance and Employees’ Compensation Ordinance.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, in his 2025 Policy Address, pledged to introduce legislation to improve the work injury compensation mechanism for digital platform workers.

Responding to a written legislative inquiry from Lam in January, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han said the administration aims to submit the legislative proposal within this year for a work injury compensation mechanism for digital platform workers.

Broader challenges

Apart from new gigs stemming from technological progress, Lam has also turned to the broader workforce, where ordinary laborers are bearing the brunt of AI-driven digital transformation.

He plans to seek additional resources for training midcareer industrial workers in advanced technology — to boost productivity — and to help older or less-educated workers make their way in service employment.

Traditionally, the broader temporary workforce has long faced steep labor-protection hurdles, Lam said.

“Hong Kong raised the maximum penalty for breaches a few years back, but the recent year-end tolls have seen no meaningful drop.”

Serious workplace safety breaches in Hong Kong can cost a liable party HK$10 million ($1.3 million) and two years in prison, following an amendment in April 2023 to the Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance and the Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance.

Still, according to the Association for the Rights of Industrial Accident Victims, as of Dec 22, 118 people died on the job in Hong Kong last year — a staggering 55 percent jump from 76 deaths in the previous year. By industry, construction alone claimed 50 lives in 2025, or about 42 percent of the yearly total.

Lam identified a vague “lack of role clarity” among workers, foremen, and independent safety consultants as the core risk. To resolve this, he plans to champion independent site supervision, separate safety-cost contract lines, and broader application of these measures across all project sizes.

Policy from experience

During decades spent on labor rights-related work, Lam’s intention to speak up for his fellow workers heightened after sitting on the city’s statutory Labour Advisory Board as an employee representative.

Nominated by the FTU, he assumed the role on Jan 1, 2023. Ever since, reviewing policy documents has been officially part of his job.

He received numerous proposals — on imported labor, the minimum wage, Mandatory Provident Fund revisions, and occupational safety — but often found that by the time the files reached the board, decisions were often already “set in stone”, he said. Improvements were conceivable, but “there was no room to act on them”.

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Three years later, on Jan 1, he became a Legislative Council member representing the labor constituency.

Months into his term, Lam said the legislative seat allows him to deliver more policy protections for the city’s workers, primarily by serving as a supporter and constructive adviser to the local administration under the city’s “executive-led” model.

He sees his role as part of a larger pattern, with the new-term legislature taking on a supportive posture, spotting issues, and proposing concrete, targeted proposals.

Although his legislative seat is decades away from his childhood days, Lam said the early warmth and affection he felt for the working men and women who surrounded him then still inspire his work today.

“They do solid, grounded work, and they’re solid, grounded people too.” Having come from among them, Lam said his greatest expectation as a legislator is to offer “solid, grounded” suggestions that the government can consider and then act upon.

Contact the writers at wanqing@chinadailyhk.com