TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 116

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:

(c)

(d)

Despite their superficial conventionality, one can see,

for instance, considerable potential for a local version

of the French events of 1968 among Hong Kong students

and workers.

I could not claim, in the brief period allocated so far

to this study, to have examined (or even had access to)

all the evidence. But some familiarity with a variety

of developing countries leaves me with a distinct impression - despite the Chinese dislike of ostentatious

consumption as a normality that an industrial economy

like Hong Kong is highly vulnerable to international

criticism of its contrast of poverty with overweening

wealth. I am not convinced that its workers have shared

appropriately in its prosperity.

-

1

Even a brief expert acquaintance with Hong Kong suggests

there are things like the planned raising of the school-

leaving age or introduction of paid annual holidays

where movement is ponderously slow compared with the

alacrity of Hong Kong's "establishment" when a potential

for profit is concerned.

(e) Despite, again, its apparent bustle and efficiency, there

are pockets of inefficiency in Hong Kong industry and

commerce which survive only from their access to cheap,

immobile labour and can continue to do so even while

new industries are suffering from labour shortage.

not justified by anything

in main

body of report.

Moreover, much of the vertical structure of pay differentials in

Hong Kong appears historical rather than incentive, and is (apart from any consequent economic inefficiency) particularly likely to create

discontent amongst the expanding and young higher-educated groups; I

rather imagine, for instance, that the Polytechnic students who carried

out much of our interview work for us would, if it came to the point,

make a much more effective agitational force than the anarchistic

Parisians of my 1968 acquaintance. This comment is not irrelevant to

my terms of reference because (again) much of the recent growth in

ostensible labour organisation and relationships in Hong Kong has been

in the "white-collar" field.

Jfin

/75.

The