Low-paid worker in Hong Kong

Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), quoting the figures of the Department of Statistics, said that the number of low-wage and long-working-time workers has increased dramatically. The number of employees with a monthly wage below $3,000 has increased from 59,000 in 1997 to 141,000, by 138%. Most workers suffer long working time. The employees who work for 55 hours each week. The number increases by 66.3% and reached 833,000 last year.

HKCTU points out that employees with less than a monthly wage of $5,000 increase in number from 307,000 in 1997 to 528,000 last year, by 71.8%. The Chief Secretrary of HKCTU Lee Cheuk Yan said that the proportion of workers with a monthly wage of $3,000 to the entire workforce increases from 1.9% to 4.1%. Apparently, low wage earners experience "downward mobility". The size of long-time workers expands dramatically from 501,000 in 1997 to 833,000 last year. Most of them are women workers, increasing from 201,000 to 383,000 in number, by 90.5%.

Lee Sai Kwan, aged 50, is one of the people undergoing downward mobility. He earned HK$18,000 monthly as a technical officer of the PCCW (the biggest phone and internet service provider). He was sacked in 2002. He had worked as contract worker or security officer with a monthly wage of HK$9,000. Now he is unemployed.

As Lee Cheuk Yan said, more women go out to work. And more new immigrants to Hong Kong create an oversupply of low-skilled workers. Their wage level is persistently repressed. He urged Hong Kong government to set minimum wage and standard labor time as soon as possible. And it should evaluate the current labor laws in order to strengthen the protection for employees.

The Social Welfare Department launched a six-months program of "Yanhiu Program" last year. The single welfare recipient with children aged between 12 and 14 is required to get a paid job not less than 32 hours per month. Over 7,300 people have joined this program until January this year. About 1,6000 people got full-time or part-time jobs.

According to a research report published by the "Alliance concerning social welfare policy evaluation", most participants think that the program is not only unable to assist them to integrate into the society, but also it deprives them of time for taking care of children. What they could do is low-paid job and it makes the problem of employed poverty even worse.

Source in Chinese

Photo: Quasimime

Cheap Labor and Fast Food

Over the past few years, there are many controversies over the foreign owned fast food restaurants such as KFC and McDonald's in China. Recently, some part-time workers accuse them of unfair treatment including offering low wage, requiring long work hours, unequal agreement, and refusing to give workers labour contract.

New Express (Xin Kuaibao), a Guangzhou based newspaper, yesterday covered a two-month labor survey on the foreign owned fast food companies such as KFC and McDonald's in its four full pages. According to the research, the labor conditions of them violate some Chinese law. There are a lot of problems remaining to be solved.

The part-time workers' salary of KFC is 4.7 yuan (US$0.6) per hour. Pizza Hut is 5.8 yuan (US$0.72). The wage level of McDonald's is the lowest, only 4 yuan (US$0.5) per hour. With this hourly salary, the worker could not even afford to buy a medium-sized cup of coke.

However, according to Guangzhou's first standard for part-time worker, the minimum hourly wage is 7.5 yuan (US$0.93). In other words, the wage of all these foreign owned restaurants is lower than it.

Apart from low wage, overtime is another general problem. According to regulations, a part-time worker could work for an employer longer than 5 hours on average each day. If the working hour exceeds this standard, the employer has to hire him/her as full-time worker and take related responsibilities for him/her.

The survey found that there are a lot of overtime part-time workers in these foreign owned restaurants. Some even work longer than 10 hours each day. They work like full-time workers and the shop owners also allow and encourage them to do so.

It also noted that after most part-time workers, who are university students, sign agreement contract with the employers, they could not obtain it on time. Some even could not get a copy of it. The managers of some restaurants revise the contract without notifying the workers.

Source: Hong Kong Economic Journal 2007.3.29

Photo: Xie Xian he Luobote

University student and regional disparity

According to an investigation of the working condition of 14,000 white collar workers in Beijing, 52% of respondents answer “always work overtime” and only 4% answer “rarely work overtime”. 73% are not paid for overtime by their employers who violate labor law stipulating it as 150% of the basic salary. Some argue that there is an oversupply of university degree holders.

In 1998, only 1.084 million people were admitted to university. There were 2.158 million university students. Since 1999, there has been a rapid expansion of university enrollment. From 2004-2006, the intake increases from 4 million to 5.3 million. In 2006, about 1.24 million university graduates failed to get a job. In 2006, of a total of 4.13 million university graduates, 66.10% earned 1000-2000 yuan monthly.

Yet the expansion of tertiary education sector is not the main cause for the gloomy labor market. In the national population, the number of university students and graduates is not that high, only about the sixtieth in the world.

According to a survey conducted by the National Statistics Bureau, half of the university graduates receive an income lower than their expected salary. Among them, 60% refuse to look for jobs in remote area and medium and small size cities. As Li Zhi Jie and Hu Feng argue, there is a three-tier structure in China: Formal sector of large cities, informal sector and rural village. The gap between them is huge and increasing.

Sun Li Ping, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, argues that since the 1990s, resource and opportunities have been highly concentrated in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Regional disparity becomes so serious that a university graduate might feel hopeless in the less developed region. That is why many people squeeze into the developed areas.

Photo: scribeoflight