TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 128

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Increased educational opportunities, by enlarging the pool of

qualified manpower, will have the consequence of reducing inter-

firm mobility even further. There is some evidence that this

position may have already been reached in the junior clerical job

market.

(b) To hear some employers talk one would think that most HK

workers change job several times a year. In fact, high levels of

turnover are confined to the booming manufacturing industries (electronics, garments, plastic toys, etc) whose profitability and

insatiable demand for semi-skilled, young, predominantly female

operatives does encourage workers to shop around for marginal wage

increments. The unmarried young, particularly girls with less than

Form 5 education, are liable to seek the short-term rewards of

dead-end jobs in fly-by-night industries which have no guaranteed

future. There is a substantial floating post of labour in

manufacturing which can bid up wages at times of peak demand,

precisely because of its willingness to change jobs. Construction,

transport, seafaring, catering and other sectors employing men in

casual unskilled and semi-skilled manual work are also vulnerable

to rapid turnover, particularly since mobility between trades (as well as between firms) is relatively easy, in the absence of union

control over entry. So there is considerable turnover in the more

volatile sectors of the labour market, but we should not allow this

fact to dominate our vision of HK, so that it appears as an economic

system in which labour is a near perfectly mobile factor of production, switching readily from one stagnant trade to the next

boo ming industry.

(c) Of fundamental importance to the functioning of the labour

market is the co-existenee with large scale business of a proliferat-

ing small scale sector, composed of everything from machine shops

to streethawkers. This sector is an important safety valve for

frustrated ambitions thwarted bureaucrats can turn to independent

enterprise, skilled men can become their own bosses. Redundant or

poorly-paid workers can take up self-employment in hawking or, more

commonly, they can supplement wage earnings with part-time self-

employment. If they go bust, there is a reasonable chance of finding

work for wages.

This sector also allows larger-scale manufacturing

firms to stabilise production

putting out in times of boom and