TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 270

iii

3. Restrictions on the physical mobility of labour:

Transport costs play a large part in workers' choice of employment. It is said that they are reluctant to commute far, and there is evidence of their sensitivity to this issue in the general outcry that follows an increase in the cost of public transport. Many firms provide free transport in order to get over this problem and perhaps to widen the net of potential employees. Geographical distance, particularly the division between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, is a major factor in restricting the mobility of labour. Second, the extreme scarcity of housing discourages frequent residential moves and most people stay put, once they have an adequate place to live in. Relative immobility is also promoted by the provision of company housing (dormitories, married flats etc.) in some cases: but this is less common now than in the early phase of post-war industrialisation (the Shanghai pattern). Third, workers may be tied economically to one locality by a member of factors: they may depend on localised information and recruitment networks (particularly casual labourers); they may rely on contacts and material support from a restricted network of kin and friends; and, when several members of a family

are pooling incomes (especially when part of that income comes from highly

localised self-employment like hawking, factory putting-out systems etc.), it is harder for one member (even the main bread-winner) to move to a new job and residence without disturbing the earning capacity of other members.

All of this combines to restrict the range within which workers may seek alternative employment and to encourage the development of locally segmented labour markets. This tendency will be increased by expansion into the New Territories, reduced possibly by developments in communications like the MTR. While touching on this subject, it should be remembered that new arrivals are coming in from China all the time, that circulation of personnel between HK and China is relatively easy and that consequently rural-urban migration on a substantial scale is not ruled out by the political barrier between HK and Kwangtung Province.

4. Employers' attempts to 'commit' labour:

To what extent is it in the interests of HK's employers to encourage the development of a highly volatile labour force? How, assuming that they would want to, can and do employers seek to 'commit' labour? Obviously, firms whose product market is stable will want to reap the benefits of a loyal, stable and therefore more effective labour force; firms whose product market is subject to wide and rapid fluctuations (manufacture of consume goods, construction, transhipment of trade goods etc.) will emphasise impersonal contract, so that they may hire and fire labour relatively easily. The survival of labour subcontracting in some sectors may be attributed to the need of certain employers to maintain a flexible 'reserve army' of casual labour. Here the iurden of committing workers lies with the subcontractor who must, like the proprietor of a small enterprise, rely on the adequacy of the wage offered and on his face-to-face relations with employees to secure a regular supply of labour. But the common pattern in HK, reinforced no doubt by employers' perception of a chronic shortage of certain kinds of labour in the long run, has been for both large and small firms to seek to reduce turnover as much as possible. The small firms do not have the resources to absorb overheads of the kind undertaken by larger organisations, and the majority must rely on paying high market rates (to compensate for the greater risk of intermittent employment) and on the development of mutual trust in relations with their experienced workers. Where a particular trade is fairly localised and employers have a mind to restrict job-switching, they can often bring to bear effective sanctions within the trade itself (even to the point of invoking 'tradition' and 'community'). But in general small employers, especially those engaged in less traditional activities, are most vuluerable = to labour turnover (as of course to market pressures in general).

Page 270Page 271