A
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of employees as a whole, for instance, only 26% had worked for their
present employer for less than a year, and over half had been with him
for more than 3 years. And interviews with individual firms revealed
several cases where labour turnover was as low as 5% a year. Many of
the larger firms, even in manufacturing, are interested in committing
their labour force (or at least a large proportion of it) permanently
to their employment, relying largely on putting-out work to smaller
sub-contractors to meet surges in demand: such commitment is, indeed,
the purpose of many of the welfare and bonus provisions which they make
(like accommodation and educational subsidies, or "long service" and
seniority bonuses).
37. In any case, over a third of Hong Kong employment is white-collar,
much of it in public services or large trading, financial and commercial
institutions. And in these cases, the employee's prospects of advance-
ment (apart from a smallish number of people with particular technical
or administrative qualifications and expertise which are still in scarce
supply) depend largely on continuity of service with a particular
employer, to whose requirements the employee's knowledge and capacity
become increasingly specific with time. But the same is also true of
many manual occupations; in the absence (until recently) of general
apprenticeship and training systems, workers have acquired their skills
in particular firms, and these are often again fairly specific to one or
two enterprises. Moreover, many larger firms make a practice of
internal promotion to chargehands, foremen and supervisory posts (with
accompanying discrimination in welfare and fringe benefits) which gives
the ambitious worker a strong interest in remaining with one employer.
On the other hand, older men with a refugee background have a special
concern for stability and security. Again, our surveys showed that such
people had often experienced a considerable drop in social and economic
status, which probably increased their reluctance to take the risk of
further mobility.
38.
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Even in industries where short-term employment is normal for men
especially construction, which was widely quoted as a potential pace-
setter for the male manual labour market there are limitations on the
worker's mobility. The general system of hiring labour through agents,
who will each generally have a pool of workers (of specialised or varied
trades) gives the latter an interest in attaching themselves regularly to
a particular sub-contractor. Both in construction and other industries,
/many