20
many firms operate with a core of permanent workers and hire others on a
temporary basis. But there are two recognised types of "temporary"
worker long-term casuals ("cheung-saan-kung") and short-term ones
("saan-kung"). The last are often paid on a daily, as opposed to the
more usual fortnightly or monthly basis: even in our sample of factory
operatives, about a quarter of all those interviewed fell in each of the
two "temporary" categories. So that, with luck, diligence (and the
avoidance of trouble) a man may move by stages from very casual to
permanent employment by making himself regularly available to a
particular firm. To which one might add that in smaller trades, the
sources of information on alternative job opportunities accessible to
the worker are much more restricted than in the concentrated manufactur-
ing districts of Kowloon or the tea-house recruiting centres for
construction labour; in such smaller trades, the worker relies very
largely on family and friendship contacts.
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39. All this presents a picture of a much more highly segmented labour
market, with mobility restricted to certain pockets, than is customarily
drawn of Hong Kong. But finally, the labour force itself is also much
less homogeneous than is usually represented. There are groups at a
particular disadvantage in the labour market: many employers, for
instance, appear reluctant to employ young men without secondary
education because the present interval of two years between the age to
which education is compulsory (12) and the minimum age for employment
(14) is alleged to make them undisciplined and difficult to handle if
not positively criminal in their associations*. Older men who have not
formed a permanent association with a big firm are very vulnerable, as
are older women who have returned to employment after marriage.
Recently-arrived immigrants (there is still a steady flow, legal and
illegal, from mainland China) are obliged to concentrate on the Kowloon
side from want of main island living space and form a pool of labour
with limited knowledge of local pay and job opportunities. "Hawking" is
not such a resort against unemployment as is sometimes suggested; there
are currently only 40,000 licensed in Hong Kong (with perhaps 20,000
illegal ones); and a recent study indicated that they were mostly older
people, with juvenile family helpers, and that 70% of them had been in
/business
* The minimum school-leaving age is to be raised to 14 but not, we
understand, until 1980.