TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 272

consciousness of the rights of working people (reinforced by the 1967 riots, foreig pressure groups and government action in the field of labour legislation). But these observations apply mainly to the large firms and it should not be forgotten that a very large proportion of workers are employed in small concerns which are themselves extremely vulnerable to market fluctuations. Nevertheless, the seven factors listed above combine to provide substantial inducements for labour to stay put rather than seek employment wherever the highest wages are currently paid. Once workers have made the psychological adjustment to sticking it out with one firm, a large proportion of them are thereby effectively withdrawn from those sectors of the labour market where the forces of free competition are at work.

5. Patterns of mobility in the labour force :

We may divide discussion of occupational mobility into three parts: (a) vertical mobility within the wage labour market (b) horizontal mobility in the same and (c) movements between the wages sector and independent enterprise/non-wage employment.

This

the

(a) The value of individual upward mobility is held strongly in HK. takes the form of an exaggerated respect for educational qualifications, a traditional Chinese attitude but one which so far has been reinforced by post-war experience in the Colony. Educational attainment sharply divides the labour market into zones of opportunity to which some have access and others are denied. Hence many young employees attend part-time evening classes in the hope of improving their chances. This aspiration attracts young workers to sectors which offer the best opportunities for promotion large-scale commercial/services sector (including government). Fromotion depends in some degree on staying with one firm, although sideways movement to win promotion is possible where competition between employers is strong. Generally, turnover among non-manual workers is low. Limited opportunities exist for promotion in the industrial sectors through apprenticeship training to acquire skills, and the assumption of greater responsibility with practical experience. Here too, for a time at any rate, a person who wants to get ahead will be well-advised to stay with one firm. Upward mobility tends, therefore, to reinforce the development of internal labour markets in large firms and to reduce labour force mobility as a whole. (This tendency is, of course, only relative and partial.) 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 willingner to change jobs. Construction, transport, seafaring, catering and other sectors employing men in casual unskilled and semiskilled 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 cur vision of HK, so that it appears as an economic syster which labour is a near perfectly mobile factor of production, switch: readily from one stagnant trade to the next booming industry.