18
34. These workers have, in any case, no long-term commitment to the
labour market. But even for them, there are restrictions on their
ability to function as "perfect labour market" operators. Despite the
urban concentration of Hong Kong and Kowloon, travel around the twin
cities takes time and is unusually liable to interruptions and traffic-
jams. Few workers were apparently prepared to travel very far from
their homes in search of jobs, and the intense scarcity of housing makes
domestic mobility virtually impossible for most. The dependence of
family incomes on several earners, as well as family tradition, means
that young unmarried women are virtually tied to districts near the
family flat.
www
35. It did not in any case seem to us at all easy for workers to make
reasonably accurate comparisons of the relative compensation (or "net
advantages") of alternative jobs even apart from the wide range of
wage rates for comparable occupations which is apparent from official
surveys*. In our first sample of factory workers, over 40% were paid on
piece-rates, which are generally not standardised between firms but fixed at the workplace by supervisors, and 34% received incentive bonuses (the two figures overlap) the earnings yield of which would often be hard
for the individual to judge without direct experience. In particular,
there is a variety of other bonus systems in common use, and much less
standardisation in respect both of these and other fringe benefits than
one would find, say,
in a European industrial society. Tables 4 and 5
in Appendix B gives some indication both of the wide range of these which
might be supplied, and of their possible variation between employers
'for instance, in the Tables' demonstration of a general difference
between larger and smaller firms. And in this case, the sample covers a
limited economic range only the major manufacturing industries: much
While even the
-
more variation would be found in employment as a whole.
J
most common of bonuses, the so-called "thirteenth month" or Chinese New
Year Bonus, is often unpredictable, since many firms vary this
substantially according to their current prosperity.
36. For the employee population as a whole, it is evident that despite
the comparative youth of the Hong Kong labour force, the picture of
labour instability is greatly overdrawn. In our second, larger survey
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* Thus the last report of the Labour Commissioner quoted $14-$40 as the
range of daily wages for semi-skilled manufacturing workers in
September 1975.