2
G
54
Section 2. Wages.
QUEW NE
(9
(a) (i) Reference wages quoted in the note.
$
Building Construction: semi-skilled: women - $3.50 - $7. It is rare for women to be employed in the Building Industry for anything but unskilled work - earth carrying, etc. average hours 8-9, and daily earnings $2 - $3.50.
Electric Torch Cases & Hardware: more than $3 not common (ii) - £ exchange. This would be better excluded as it is
misleading the U.K. reader will inevitably compare Hong Kong wages with his own in terms of £ s. d. and not in terms of what it can buy and the general way of life. (b) The following extract from a report made in March 1949 on
21 factories making garments (chiefly shirts) from woven materials summarises wages for a 9-11 hour day in this section of the textile industry:
there is considerable similarity in con- ditions in those factories listed as garment- making and those in the garment-making section of the knitting industry. So it is, also, with the types of work done. The chief difference is that unless underwear or other garments in locknit material are being made there are few or no seamers or menders required; while in shirtmaking out of woven material, there is a specialised section for collar making. The types of work are:
Cutting
Collar Sewing
Sewing Seaming (few
Buttonhole Sewers Button Sewing
Menders (few)
Ironers
General Workers
(folders, packers, ¿
etc.
(10) Embrodiery
(very few)
Rates and Wages.
With one exception done by men. - With the exception of a few women
in one factory, done by men. Usually women, occasionally men.
- Men, and very often apprentices. - Usually women; sometimes men or
apprentices.
Women.
Mostly men; some women.
Mostly men; some women.
-
Women.
In
The wages of men employed in this industry were reckoned generally either by piece rates or on a monthly basis. Only one instance was encountered of a man who was on a flat daily rate. The women, with the exception of the employees of the Maymoon Factory where three were on a monthly basis and the rest on daily pay, and a few other isolated cases of menders, button sewers and general workers on a flat daily rate, all were on piece rates. the few instances where men and women in the same factory were doing the same work, piece rates were the same for both. Daily averages for women on piece rates were easier to calculate than those for men as women's hours are more closely regulated while men's are unrestricted and the output given in some instances must have been for a greater number of hours than the regular working day.
Rates and wages in individual processes are as follows:-