TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 135

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industrial action when they have a grievance.

Bureaucratic proce-

dures which take a long time to be implemented and which are

unsupported by mechanisms of arbitration/conciliation can only add

to the build-up of pockets of worker militancy in the civil ser-

vice. The very existence of a monolithic employer promotes

combinations of workers, even if, as in this case,

highly fragmented.

combination is

In conclusion, it ought to be noted that government expenditure

on wages (both in terms of employment volume and salary levels) has

accelerated rapidly since 1970, for reasons that are known only to

those who manage the economy. What has been the effect on the

private sector?

There is a very

(b) Government's effect on private sector wages: intimate link between pay in government and in, eg the utility

companies who form a significant part of the PIU's sample of 68

firms. They employ similar types of labour and direct comparison

is easy.

Most large company managers told me that they had to

follow the government rate a plausible exaggeration of the true

situation. It only has to be partly true for an inflationary spiral

to be generated. The government surveys wage trends in the private

sector and bases its own increases on those trends (let's forget for

now the arguments about the effect of incremental scales on such a

comparison); by the time its award is announced, workers in the

private sector seek a raise to catch up and this in turn is monitored

by next year's survey

etc, etc.

It is also the case that very

profitable companies are the bulk of those surveyed, so that what

Jardines can afford to pay out is, we are told, foisted on an

unwilling, less profitable firm through the government's action.

There are certain basic flaws in this argument: mainly, how

is "workers' demand for equivalence with government" transmitted

as an effective constraint on company wages policy? This is

particularly germane since the companies we are talking about have

low turnover rates and a strongly internalised labour market, for

reasons outlined in section 4, So, in the absence of marked

inter-firm mobility and strong collective representation within

firms, workers cannot demand anything, unless the employers find

these demands reasonable. It may be a different story in more

competitive sectors of the labour market. The government is by far

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