24
Marshallian rather than the Marxist sense: namely that workers in some
cases might be paid less than their market value, so that their
employers could raise wages without reducing profits below the going
rate of return on capital. (We certainly encountered instances of
groups whose pay seemed very low in terms of comparable work elsewhere.)
The structure of pay-differentials is largely determined by employer
practice and requirements, and in several instances conveyed little
impression of internal equity. While pay-systems, and the combination
of wage and non-wage benefits, is not necessarily that which workers
would prefer, but largely reflect particular employer requirements.
And in one major respect to judge by the character of labour disputes
and strikes
-
J
the system has certainly failed to meet workers'
aspirations: in the provision of security. These are things which, in
other industrial countries, would have stimulated active labour
movements: why has no such movement developed in Hong Kong?
V
The Attitudes of Hong Kong Workers
49. This brings us to our second possibility: that the weakness of
trade unionism and collective pressure for social reform in Hong Kong
arises from the specific attitudes of employees themselves. The
detailed answers to this question are conveyed by the two surveys, first
of factory workers and then of employees generally, which we undertook.
Dr Fosh's summary report on the first is attached as Appendix B; if,
I hope, at least the general results of the second are available in
computer-calculated form and in time (notwithstanding certain apparent
current difficulties in their official transmission to Hong Kong) these
will be attached as Appendix C.
50.
as
Summarily, however, the picture drawn by these surveys appears, on
the whole, to have no great correspondence to the stereotype first
presented to us of an almost pure "economic man", individualistic and
anti-collective except in respect of his family associations. 89% of
our factory workers, for instance, were not refugees but reared in
Hong Kong or Kowloon. Their ambitions for themselves were limited and
realistic; over 40% expected to be doing much the same kind of job in
5 years' time and only % considered setting up their own business as a
possible short-term objective though a third of them had some ultimate
/hope
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