ENG-1959 — Page 52

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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

compensate for price fluctuations. The allowances paid are based on the Retail Price Index, compiled and published monthly by the Commerce and Industry Department. This system was in force during the year for Government employees: but the Salaries Com- mission recommended that cost of living allowances, other than for minor staff, should be incorporated in basic salaries.

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Working Hours. Regulations made under the Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance, 1955, which came into effect on 1st January 1959, introduced new restrictions on the hours of work for women and young persons between the ages of 14 and 18 employed in industry. By these regulations, the maximum hours which may be worked were limited to 10_hours in a day, with a break of not less than half an hour after five hours work. To allow for overtime to meet pressure of work, the hours of work can be increased to eleven in any day, provided that, for any industrial undertakings, overtime does not exceed in the aggregate one hundred hours in any year or six hours in any week and does not take place in more than twenty five weeks in any year. In exceptional circumstances additional overtime may be worked with the approval of the Commissioner of Labour. A weekly rest day must be given.

Young persons under the age of 16 may work only 8 hours in a day, with an hour's break after 5 hours work. Children under the age of 14 may not be employed in industry. Women and young persons may not work at night. There are no restrictions on the working hours of men.

Three-quarters of the men employed in industry normally work 10 hours a day or less. This proportion includes the majority of workers in the plastic, metalware, rubber shoe, and torch case manufacturing industries, the printing trade, shipbuilding and repairing, and the public utilities. Outdoor staff in the Govern- ment service and employees of commercial and industrial concerns operated on Western lines work an 8-hour day.

Daily hours of work in excess of 10 for male workers are largely confined to the enamelware industry and, to a decreasing extent, to cloth-dyeing and other textile concerns working a single or two shift system. A significant development during the year was the increasing resort to an 8-hour shift system in the textile industry. At the end of the year all 23 cotton spinning mills were operating