TNAG-0647-FCO40-795-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H-A-Turn-1977 — Page 99

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34. These workers have, in any case, no long-term commitment to the

labour market. But even for them, there are restrictions on their

ability to function as "perfect labour market" operators. Despite the

urban concentration of Hong Kong and Kowloon, travel around the twin

cities takes time and is unusually liable to interruptions and traffic-

jams. Few workers were apparently prepared to travel very far from

their homes in search of jobs, and the intense scarcity of housing makes

domestic mobility virtually impossible for most. The dependence of

family incomes on several earners, as well as family tradition, means

that young unmarried women are virtually tied to districts near the

family flat.

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35. It did not in any case seem to us at all easy for workers to make

reasonably accurate comparisons of the relative compensation (or "net

advantages") of alternative jobs even apart from the wide range of

wage rates for comparable occupations which is apparent from official

surveys*. In our first sample of factory workers, over 40% were paid on

piece-rates, which are generally not standardised between firms but fixed at the workplace by supervisors, and 34% received incentive bonuses (the two figures overlap) the earnings yield of which would often be hard

for the individual to judge without direct experience. In particular,

there is a variety of other bonus systems in common use, and much less

standardisation in respect both of these and other fringe benefits than

one would find, say,

in a European industrial society. Tables 4 and 5

in Appendix B gives some indication both of the wide range of these which

might be supplied, and of their possible variation between employers

'for instance, in the Tables' demonstration of a general difference

between larger and smaller firms. And in this case, the sample covers a

limited economic range only the major manufacturing industries: much

While even the

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more variation would be found in employment as a whole.

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most common of bonuses, the so-called "thirteenth month" or Chinese New

Year Bonus, is often unpredictable, since many firms vary this

substantially according to their current prosperity.

36. For the employee population as a whole, it is evident that despite

the comparative youth of the Hong Kong labour force, the picture of

labour instability is greatly overdrawn. In our second, larger survey

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* Thus the last report of the Labour Commissioner quoted $14-$40 as the

range of daily wages for semi-skilled manufacturing workers in

September 1975.