tim's experiment

Here is an everyday story of Hong Kong employment. A large corporation, finding itself employing a large number of unskilled people on menial manual work, decides to outsource the operation to a number of contractors. This makes no immediate difference to the employees – they are simply transferred from one employer to another.

But the arrangement is cheaper. Why is it cheaper? Because the employees, having in legal theory been fired and rehired, are no longer entitled to a number of benefits, like severance and sickness pay, which are calculated on the basis of length of service. Moreover, because the contracts are re-awarded every two years the peons whose work is the object of the exercise will never qualify for these benefits on the scale which was clearly intended by the original legislation. In other words this is a classic story of an employer using a legal wheeze to deprive his employees of their dues, and thereby to save money.

By now you will be wondering which of the usual suspects I am going to name as the perpetrator of this rousing piece of chicanery. But this is where the story, which can be found in its full glory on Page 3 of the latest Sunday Post, gets interesting. Because the perpetrating employer is none of the numerous local taipans notorious for their ingenuity in finding new ways to grind the faces of the poor, water the workers’ beer and generally demonstrate that great fortunes are based on great selfishness and greed. Not at all. The perpetrator in this case is none other than our rich and generous government. And the victims are the ladies (as they usually seem to be) who sweep our streets in a rather old-fashioned way with giant brooms. This is all the province of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, the very same hotbed of bureaucratic inefficiency whose hordes of uniformed myrmidons descend on any eatery rash enough to put a table on the pavement outside, and which takes six months to issue a routine restaurant licence.

The best bit is still to come. At the end of the story our intrepid reporter Jennifer Ngo (who will I fear be sweeping streets herself if she keeps writing this sort of story in the present climate) as a matter of course asked the department concerned for its side of the story. The only comment the department would make was that the outsourcing policy was “designed to ensure the best use of public money”. This is right up there with the MacDonalds non-apology as one of the PR catastrophes of the year. I am sure I speak for the vast majority of taxpayers when I say that our hopes for parsimony in the spending of public money do not run as far as expecting the government to cheat its own staff.

What an obscene spectacle we are presented with here! Imagine all the things going on simultaneously: Henry, then FS, is expanding his house to accommodate his wine collection; Lufsig is adding the tenth illegal adornment to his two houses on the Peak; Rafael is blowing millions on a Shanghai floozy; Donald is riding in millionaires’ yachts; several tens of worthless political flunkies are being added to the government on ridiculous salaries; billions are being blown on unwanted and overblown megaprojects; while down in the streets of Sham Shui Po a Mrs Fok, who plies a broom on our behalf, is being robbed of basic employment benefits to save a few pennies.

As it happens I know our local street sweeper quite well. When I kept office hours my morning dog walk coincided with her daily appearance at the top of Sui Wo Road. She is small, exuberant, not much given to spending money on dentists but very conscientious. She has been doing the job for at least 20 years. Just think of the genius who noticed the money that could be saved by wriggling out of paying sick pay to an employee like this! Then ponder the terms and conditions of employment this desk warrior is enjoying. And then weep, or vomit, according to taste.