TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 121

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Communication of information about vacancies:

The high density of industrial establishments and Hong Kong's

small size makes for ease of communication in the labour market:

factories of different type are often crowded together in the same

building and workers are commonly supposed to spend much time

enquiring about openings elsewhere. Lunchtime sightseeing tours,

word of mouth information (which Hong Kong's cheap and ubiquitous

telephone helps to spread) and factory-wall posters advertising

vacancies are the most common means of finding out about available

jobs. The firms make some use of newspaper and TV advertising, and,

for high grades of labour, may make direct contact with a potential

employee (poaching). These information flows are generally so

effective that few workers ever call up the government's employment

services, which fills a minimal number of jobs annually, mostly for

non-manual workers. Some government departments help to bring

employees and applicants together, eg the industrial training sec-

tion of the Labour office, the Marine Department, etc. Firms which

are desperately short of labour have been known to tour housing

estates in buses; and the system of paying employees a recruitment

bonus for limited periods of shortage has been adopted in the

fastest growing manufacturing industries (eg electronics).

All of this implies a relatively free, competitive labour

market, in which information is in itself no restraint on worker

mobility. But there are some sectors where workers depend on

intermediaries to find them employment: the traditional pattern of

Chinese employment, which probably persists in some sectors,

(eg trade), emphasised particularism at the expense of open competi-

tion. In such a situation jobseekers depend on family and friends

to serve an introduction to employment: this particularism lends

itself to a narrower view of the labour market and to restricted

information about the availability of jobs. Again, workers may be

tied to a particular foreman or master. More commonly, where

labour sub-contracting is normal (construction, docks), casual

workers often congregate in known tea houses which act as informal

employment exchanges and they depend on the middleman's access to

the contractor for knowledge about job opportunities.

These observations, however, reflect differences in the labour

relations typical of various industries, more than imperfections of