TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 101

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many firms operate with a core of permanent workers and hire others on a

temporary basis. But there are two recognised types of "temporary"

worker long-term casuals ("cheung-saan-kung") and short-term ones

("saan-kung"). The last are often paid on a daily, as opposed to the

more usual fortnightly or monthly basis: even in our sample of factory

operatives, about a quarter of all those interviewed fell in each of the

two "temporary" categories. So that, with luck, diligence (and the

avoidance of trouble) a man may move by stages from very casual to

permanent employment by making himself regularly available to a

particular firm. To which one might add that in smaller trades, the

sources of information on alternative job opportunities accessible to

the worker are much more restricted than in the concentrated manufactur-

ing districts of Kowloon or the tea-house recruiting centres for

construction labour; in such smaller trades, the worker relies very

largely on family and friendship contacts.

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39. All this presents a picture of a much more highly segmented labour

market, with mobility restricted to certain pockets, than is customarily

drawn of Hong Kong. But finally, the labour force itself is also much

less homogeneous than is usually represented. There are groups at a

particular disadvantage in the labour market: many employers, for

instance, appear reluctant to employ young men without secondary

education because the present interval of two years between the age to

which education is compulsory (12) and the minimum age for employment

(14) is alleged to make them undisciplined and difficult to handle if

not positively criminal in their associations*. Older men who have not

formed a permanent association with a big firm are very vulnerable, as

are older women who have returned to employment after marriage.

Recently-arrived immigrants (there is still a steady flow, legal and

illegal, from mainland China) are obliged to concentrate on the Kowloon

side from want of main island living space and form a pool of labour

with limited knowledge of local pay and job opportunities. "Hawking" is

not such a resort against unemployment as is sometimes suggested; there

are currently only 40,000 licensed in Hong Kong (with perhaps 20,000

illegal ones); and a recent study indicated that they were mostly older

people, with juvenile family helpers, and that 70% of them had been in

/business

* The minimum school-leaving age is to be raised to 14 but not, we

understand, until 1980.