Legend:     Document

Singapore's labour relations in the 1950s was chaotic and marked by unrest. In 1955 alone, there were 275 different strikes . Of these, only 97 were directly related to wage and working conditions. The Assistant Commissioner of Labour James Desmond Howard Neill recalled in 1982 the system’s weakness and lack of procedures to resolve disputes in the 1950s compared to what Singapore later developed .

The Hock Lee bus riots took place in this backdrop of labour-management confrontations. In the lead up to the Hock Lee bus riots, the Hock Lee bus company management dismissed 229 employees who were SBWU members . Three months before the riots, dismissed workers from the Paya Lebar Bus Company, joined by supporters and students, picketed the bus depot to disrupt bus services in response to the dismissal of union leaders .

Police used water hoses to disperse the crowds at the Hock Lee depot. The strike escalated into a riot with four deaths and 31 injured. There was much violence as people were stoned, beaten, and set alight . Sympathy strikes in support of the picketing workers resulted in work in all ten other bus companies being interrupted . Labour department officials at the time noted that both union and the employer ratcheted the labour dispute into a law and order issue. The union, by rejecting a Court of Inquiry recommendation; and the employer who declined the Labour Department’s offers to mediate the dispute and who also set up an employer-sponsored rival union, were both complicit in the ensuing riot .

The appointed arbitrator after the riots, Charles Gamba, who subsequently became the first President of Singapore’s Industrial Arbitration Court, noted that the aim of any tribunal is not only to resolve the industrial dispute but to pave the way for more harmonious relations between the employer and workers in the future .

By Ministry of Manpower. Published May 2021.