TNAG-0650-FCO40-798-Study-of-labour-relations-in-Hong-Kong-by-Professor-H.-A.-Tu-1977 — Page 75

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tion.

Employees of small firms were much less hesitant about putting their

om case (70% would here compared to 228 in large firms), young men were

also less hesitant (65% of younger men woulà compared to 39% of older men,

42% of younger women and 33% of older women) as were skilled members

(62% of skilled workers would compared to 44% of semi-skilled and 35% of

unskilled).

The workers in the sample had high expectations of employer paternalism;

93 respondents felt that an employer should look after the interests of

his workers. However, although the respondents as we have previously seen

were satisfied with their own particular employer, they tended to feel

that the employers of most firms were only interested in getting as much

work as possible out of their employees rather than being genuinely

interested in their welfare (53 agreed with the first compared to 43 with the

second). The young expressed more hostile views here; 61% of the younger

men and 48% of the younger women concurred with the exploitive view

compared to 483 of older men and 22% of older women.

H

The translation into Cantonese of the third question on workers/management

view, on whether the respondents held a unitary or a pluralistic view

of the firm was found to be unsatisfactory during the pilot study as the

"}

apparently

first choice "statement had Commúnist overtones.

However, we point out

here that if the respondents did not agree with the conflict of interests

statement offered as second choice in this question, they could have

1

" replied don't know.

15

In the event, a sizeable proportion of the sample

(68) felt that employers and workers did not have the same interests.

Again the more hostile viewpoint was taken by the young; particularly

this time by the younger men. 83 of the younger men and 64% of the

younger women felt that workers and employers did not have the same

interests compared to 56% of the older men and 229 of the older women.

More hostility was also displayed by the less.skilled respondents; 88%

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