小蝴蝶结又有心事。

 

 

The Minimum Wage Bill:

Better, or Worse Off ?

“I don’t know whether a minimum wage standard will do any good to my life, but I do know that, what I’m earning now is merely enough to feed myself,” said John Lee, a trainee-level waiter of a Chinese restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui, who is packing to go home after a long working day at 9:30 in the evening.

 

The Calling for Actions

Graduated several months ago from Form 3 in high school, John had interviewed four different jobs before he finally settled down in this restaurant. “I work 11 hours per day, six days per week. In terms of salary, it’s HK$20 an hour or HK$5300 a month,” said John, with an obviously discontented look. Given his calculation, apart from all necessary living costs and 1000 dollars’ domestic money to his parents, all he is left with is just 1200 dollars.

“I want to buy myself an iPhone 3GS, ” he said with a forced smile, “but it takes me five months to afford one.”

John is just one of the 200,000 workers in catering industry struggling for their lives. “Catering industry is the toughest one in Hong Kong, we work the longest and we earn the least,” Kelly Yip, a head waitress of a local canteen near the Tai Wai KCR station complaint to the reporter while she was at a break in the afternoon’s off-peak hour.

According to the <Quarterly Report of Wage and Payroll Statistics> announced in June 2009, averagely, waiters and waitresses earn HK$8140 monthly, work 9 hours a day and 26 days s month.

“In the dining industry, the hourly pay is unbelievably low,” said Yuen Fuk Wo, chairperson of Eating Establishment Employees General Union (EEEGU). “Things are better for those in the kitchen, since they have skills; but really awful for low-skilled workers”, Yuen added.

Considering the labor sector’s endeavor for years, Hong Kong Government finally submitted the <Minimum Wage Bill> to the Legislative Council for deliberation on July 8^th this year. In October, the temporary Minimum Wage Committee, constituted of scholars, representatives of trade unions, chambers of commerce and legal professions, started to hear voices from different groups towards the the bill and its details.

Mr Cheung Kin-chung, Secretary for Labour and Welfare, said that the Hong Kong Government would set and review the legal minimum wage level by adopting the principle of data, besides, it would also assess the impacts of the wage level on different sectors.

 

Co-existence of Doubts and Concerns

“Generally speaking, we’re supportive towards the bill,” said Yuen, the chairperson of EEEGU, “I believe it would help improving the current predicament they are going through.”

While the bill seems to be welcomed by the trade union, the employee themselves are viewing it in a more pessimistic way.

As to the Minimum Wage Bill, Kelly seemed not keen about it at all. “Nothing is going to change if the employers’ budget stays the same, they can cut down the welfare other than salaries, or simply hire less part-timers,” she stopped suddenly, “You’re not recording this, right?” Relieved after an answer of “no”, she added, “after all, they are the big boss, you have to leave if they ask you to.”

As the head waitress working full time, Kelly still needs to work 10.5 hours a day with an hourly rate less then HK$22, amounting to HK$6000-7000 every month. “In terms of hourly pay, the part-timers here earn pretty much the same, but they don’t have any of the other welfare, such as annual leave or else,” she added, “most importantly, their contract is a temporary and unsecured one.”

On the other hand, the possible rise in hourly pay from around 20 to above 30 is definitely hard to take for employers. Mr Choi, the boss of a Cafe de Coral branch near Sham Shui Po, complaint that it would be difficult for him to bear with such a big jump in hiring cost, especially when employees were usually inactive during work. “We will have no choice but to fire people to cut the cost in that way,” he said.

It’s also worth noting that the noncompliance of the Employments and Labor Law is growing widespread and not neglectable. “They just always know how to evade the rules,” said Kelly. However, when asked of more details about how employers could evade the rules, Kelly wasn’t willing to comment any more.

Yuen provided more detail on that. “It’s the government’s poor supervision that leads to the situation some small restaurants are not complying with the Labor Laws,” Yuen said, “Also, the enforcement and punishment is not effective enough. ”

Asked for the reasons behind these problems, Yuen said: “Simple. Breaking of the Labor Laws is currently defined as civil, instead of criminal actions. Therefore, even if being caught, the consequence is just not severe enough to prevent some unscrupulous employers from exploitation.”

Against this problem, the Legislative Council has recently discussed altering the issue to criminal jurisdiction. This act has been highly supported by several members of council representing the labors’ right.

Even though, doubts exist. Mr Anthony Lock, the president of Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades, said that once accused for delaying payments of salary, the actual responsible person often concealed themselves and made their scapegoats step forward. He doubts whether this act can really punish the right person.

Hearts of Controversy: How and How Much?

Although the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions has proposed a standard of HK$33 an hour, Cheung said that talking about a specific level was a bit “premature”.

As the <Minimum Wage Bill> has been officially brought into agenda, several critical details are drawing extensive attention from various interest groups, such as “price” of the minimum wage and how should the standard be enforced.

The result of a public opinion survey conducted by Liberty Party shows that, 45 per cent of management echelon in small and medium-size enterprises (SME) favor the minimum wage legislation, 10 percent points higher than the opponents. Meanwhile, the survey also reveals that managements will have to fire 66 employees in average if the standard of minimage wage hits HK$24 hourly.

Based on this result, Liberty Party projects that 36,000 SME employees will become jobless, accounting for one percent of the total employed population; the unemployment will reach 171,000 given the standard of minimum wage is HK$32 per hour.

The result of this survey is remarked as “exaggerated and misleading” by Wong Kwok-hing, a member of both Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions and Legislative Council. “If the minimum level is set to be too low, it will just force people at the bottom who can’t maintain a basic standard of living to apply for more unemployment benefit, which will finally burden the whole society,” Wong added.

However, seeing from the recent debate among industries and citizens, the “price” of minimum wage is yet to be focused on. Barely on the definition of exact working hours, there have been complex disputes.

Mr. Wong Kam-Pui, president of the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management, said that in the proposed regulations, there’re a lot of blurring areas on the definiton of working hours. For example, it’s not explicitly stipulated that how should the lunch hours, off-peak hours, business trip and stand-by hours be dealt with when measuring working hours.

According to reactions across all industries, the ambiguous calculation of working hours is the main concern of catering, building and travel industries.

“It will be a total ‘disaster’ for human resource management if the lack of unambiguous guidelines persists,” Wong worried.

 

“Of course I will feel happy if it really works and my wage is really going to increase. But who knows,” said John, the trainee in Tsim Sha Tsui’s Chinese restaurant. “I still need to work exhaustedly for 11 hours a day, six days a week. I still need to live my reckoning life. I’m not hoping for a drastic change.”

In his view, the minimum wage standard is never more important than how much domestic money he should turn in to his mom.

 

 

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感谢我的南京日报同学cindy以及南方都市报同学eason给予的关于新闻写作上的技术性指导。
谈不上呕心沥血，但的确，对于现在的菜鸟级的我来说，真是太、不、容、易、了。