26
HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
family. Contracts were not allowed to be renewed on expiry unless the worker was first given an opportunity to return to Hong Kong at the employer's expense. Only in excep- tional and carefully delineated cases were these regulations relaxed.
WAGES AND CONDITIONS
Wages. There have been no significant changes in wage rates during 1955, with the exception of adjustments in the pay of Government employees. The establishment of some 200 new factories, employing over 13,000 additional workers, helped to keep wages stable, and the average wage range for daily-rated workers was:
Skilled workmen
Semi-skilled workmen Unskilled workmen
$7-12 $5 6 5
$3
The figures given for skilled workmen are higher than those quoted last year. A wider field has been covered, and workers of more than ordinary skill are now included. There are some highly skilled workers who receive as much as $15 per day. Piece rates are common in large sections of industry, and where they are in force, women workers receive the same rates as men, although their earnings may differ. Pay for learners in trades where a short period of in-plant training is necessary is frequently below the unskilled rates quoted above.
Overtime rates for manual workers vary between time- and-a-quarter and double-time, but time-and-a-half is the most usual. A bonus of one month's wages is paid at Chinese New Year in a large number of concerns.
Some firms provide both free food and accommodation for their regular employees, whose wages are adjusted accordingly. Other concerns operate canteens for all their workers, at which food and articles of common consumption are supplied at subsidized rates, thus giving their staff partial protection against rises in the cost of living. The Govern- ment, most European concerns, and some Chinese employers. whose businesses are run on Western lines, pay instead a basic wage, together with a variable cost-of-living allowance, to compensate for price fluctuations. Hitherto the allowances paid have been based on the Labour Department's Food and