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The war against
work
Bill Stacey
(Next Magazine, 2016/6/2, A002, Second Opinion,)
When I first arrived in Hong Kong in 1989, I had the
impression of an incredibly dynamic work environment. Unemployment was
negligible and workers of all kinds were in demand. Employers constantly
complained that they could not keep staff as they bounced from opportunity to
opportunity. People not earning enough to get by might move to a new job, but
might also take on a second job. There were still families that would take on
piece work in the home for extra income.
A look at the unemployment chart shows that this was a
time when unemployment rates were just 1%.
All this has changed. The unemployment rate is now three
times as high, but as this is only a fraction of the disaster caused by the
sclerotic labor markets in many other countries, the government complacently
pats itself on the back.
In reality, our labor market is increasingly stagnant and
struggling to adapt to changes in the way people work and the structure of
industry. A “war on work” is underway, which starting with an ideology that
does not value work is prosecuted by union and academic foot soldiers who use
the heavy artillery of legislative power to destroy jobs.
The first battle was over the Mandatory Provident Fund.
Far from being a benefit for employees, the MPF confiscates some of their
earnings and creates administrative complexity for employee and employer,
leaving many a small business preferring not to take on the responsibility of
employing anyone at all. Meanwhile, the MPFA’s empire-building mission has left
our workers with little competitive choice to invest their hard earned
retirement savings.
Minimum wage was the next attack. It was sold as
protection for workers, but has simply served to eliminate jobs for less
competitive workers and reduce opportunities for the young to get a step on the
ladder of opportunity. It is not so much that opportunities are not available,
but that small and entrepreneurial companies that offer more excitement than
money can no longer get started. Minimum wage laws mandate unemployment for
those whose labor is less productive.
Working hours are the new front. Although the government
has dragged the process of review and consultations, we are moving toward
legislation that requires overtime payments for work beyond an arbitrary number
of hours. There is nothing wrong with contractual overtime payments, which can
be a valuable incentive. However, the proposed government rules dramatically
reduce flexibility. They require employers to keep detailed records of hours
worked and make more difficult arrangements like working from home, where hours
cannot be monitored. Standard working hours make life tougher for working mums,
people combining work and study, and those who want flexible work arrangements.
These are new rules, but old prohibitions on work are
being enforced with typical bureaucratic diligence. Occupational licensing is
an old scourge protecting vested interests from competition. Who knew, until
this week when we learned that a widow was prohibited from taking up her late
husband’s shoe shining license, that you needed a licence to polish shoes?
Every rule like this shuts down a job and an opportunity. Too many big
companies are content to go along with more stringent workplace rules. If it is
more expensive to hire workers and create new businesses, then there is less
competition.
It is not just government that is undermining work and
opportunity. The blithe indifference of some so-called localists to reducing
tourists impacts job opportunities and undermines our community. There are
ivory tower academics and dreamy futurists that envision a world without
traditional work, where we are all guaranteed a taxpayer-financed “living
wage”, and traditional work is all done by robots with artificial intelligence.
This is a future without the personal autonomy and freedom that most of us
want. It imposes on the working few the burden to pay for an idle many. Yet
that is the future our government will create if it does not end its war on
work and enterprise.
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See also:
Lion Rock 17: Photos and Discussions in Reading Club Salon 2014, November 25, 2014
Lion Rock 18, Nick Smith as new Chairman of LRI, April 05, 2016
Lion Rock 19, Not enough capitalism in Hong Kong, May 12, 2016
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