24
The Hong Kong Labour Market and the General Determination of Wage-Movements
33- On this point much (though not all) of the material for
what follows is contained in the Appendices to this report by Dr. Fosh
and particularly, Prof. Hart. On the one side, the major point that
has to be made is that the picture of the Hong Kong worker as a highly
mobile and informed exploiter of multiple labour market opportunities
requires, to say the least, substantial modification.
it is most true
of the younger women and girls in manufacturing, who turned out to compos
some 45% of our first sample of factory workers, but are clearly a
much lower proportion of the employee population of Hong Kong as a
whole. These have clearly supplied much of the recent increase in
Hong Kong's industrial labour force, and their induction and mobility
have provided the basis both for such developments as the recent rapid
expansion in electronics and for short-term "boom-and-bust" episodes
like the wig and denim explosions.
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.
35.
It did not in any case seem to us at all easy for workers to
make reasonably accurate comparisons of the relative compensation
....!
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