TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 95

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for grievances and workers' expectations, which

employers are careful to keep in touch with.

Communication in smaller firms is heightened by the

frequency of family and clan connections between

employer and employee, or identity of regional

origin and association. The workers for their

part, understand the highly competitive nature of

Hong Kong business, and the vulnerability of

Hong Kong industry to external competition, and

are not anxious to prejudice their firm's (or the economy's) viability by excessive demands.

(iv) Again, the refugee background and the political

situation of Hong Kong (the 1997 expiry, etc) makes

the workers take a short-term view. They value

immediate material gain (ie cash now) rather than

longer-term social improvement. They are broadly

satisfied with the gains brought by their labour

market situation and the paternalistic policy of

employers. Moreover, they are not interested in

(for instance) sacrificing immediate money gains

for such things as improvements in social security.

In any case, the Hong Kong worker is not

collectively-minded, and does not identify in a

class or occupational sense, as do the workers of

other industrial economics.

(v)

Identification is

rather with the family group. At the same time, the

family (which often includes several earners)

-

provides the individual worker with support in hard

times which makes other forms of collective

association or social security unnecessary. And

there is a further "fall-back" in the self-

employment sector (street-hawking and so on) which

is still important in Hong Kong, and which unlike

the "informal sector" in developing economies

generally does not provide substantially lower

earnings than those in less-skilled wage-employment.

(vi) Finally, workers do not think of advancement in

collective terms because they are in general

ambitious as individuals, and intend rather to get

/on