XV
VII
much work as possible out of their employees rather than being genuinely
interested in their welfare (53 agreed with the first compared to 43 with
the second). The young expressed more hostile views here; 61% of the younger men and 48% of the younger women concurred with the exploitive
view compared to 48% of older men and 22% of older women.
The translation into Cantonese of the third question on workers/management
view, on whether the respondents held a unitary or a pluralistic view
of the firm was found to be unsatisfactory during the pilot study as the
"first choice" statement apparently had Communist overtones. However,
we point out here that if the respondents did not agree with the conflict
of interests statement offered as second choice in this question, they
15 could have replied "don't know". In the event, a sizeable proportion
of the sample (68) felt that employers and workers did not have the same
interests. Again the more hostile viewpoint was taken by the young;
particularly this time by the younger men. 83% of the younger men and 64% of the younger women felt that workers and employers did not have the
same interests compared to 56% of the older men and 22% of the older
women.
More hostility was also displayed by the less-skilled respondents;
88% of the unskilled felt that workers and employers had different
interests compared to 63% of semi-skilled and 67% of skilled respondents.
Respondents' Attitudes towards Trade Unions
There was an increasingly large don't know element in the questions
relating to trade unions. The interviewers reported here that a sub-
stantial minority of the sample did not know, in fact, what trade unions
were. It is essential to cut out these persons before any of the trade
union questions are asked next time. A filter question needs to be used
here such as "Do you know what trade unions are?" and the rest of the
interview section on trade union attitudes to be continued with only if
the respondent replies in the infirmative. There would still remain,
however, the problem of distinguishing between respondents who did not
have an opinion on one particular aspect of trade unions from those who
were afraid to reply. The only solution here is to make sure that the
questions on trade unions do not entail any personal commitment on the
part of the respondent.
The workers' opinions on whether or not trade unions had a useful part
to play in Hong Kong today were divided fairly equally between those
thinking the trade unions did, those thinking the trade unions did not
and the don't knows. The low proportion in the sample as a whole who