The HKCTU emerged from the
Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC), a church-sponsored labour organisation largely involved in the grassroots movements in the 1970s and 1980s. The Confederation was established in 1990 under the leadership of independent labour leader
Lau Chin-shek. It was largely as a coalition of the independent and politically unaffiliated union organisations, most of which were new white-collar unions organising the civil service and professional or service employees in the public and subvented sectors, including the
Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union and the
Hong Kong Social Workers General Union. Days before transfer of sovereignty in 1997, with the support of the pro-democracy camp, the HKCTU successfully established statutory rights of
collective bargaining of labour unions, which mandate employers to negotiate with labour unions on issues such as salaries, welfare and working hours, by introducing the
Employee's Rights to Representation, Consultation and Collective Bargaining Bill as Lee Cheuk-yan's private member's bill. But the laws were soon abolished by the pro-Beijing appointed
Provisional Legislative Council shortly after the transfer of sovereignty. Members of HKCTU were involved in organising a number of local protests, including the pivotal
2003 July 1 march to oppose the enactment of anti-sedition laws under
Article 23 of the
Basic Law (organised by the
Civil Human Rights Front of which HKCTU is a member), and other protests to struggle for labour rights and democracy in Hong Kong and in mainland China. In the
1998 LegCo election, the group was represented by Lau Chin-shek (also a member of
Democratic Party and
The Frontier) and Lee Cheuk-yan (also a member of The Frontier) in the legislative council (LegCo). In 2012, the HKCTU co-founded the
Labour Party. In 2013, HKCTU supported a strike by its affiliate
Union of Hong Kong Dockers. After a
forty-day strike, the workers achieved a 9.8 percent pay rise, meal breaks and promises that there would be no retaliation against the strikers. At least 29 Hong Kong trade unions had already been dissolved throughout 2021. ==Notable affiliates==