Minimum wage: fight for $33, no compromise!
Thursday, 19 August 2010.
Dikang, chinaworker.info
The struggle over Hong Kong's first statutory minimum wage has reached a crucial juncture. The minimum wage was passed into law on 17 July, although it will not acquire legal force until next year. Meanwhile, the government appointed body that will recommend at which level the wage is set will report in the next few weeks. Unfortunately all the indications are that union leaderships involved in talks over the minimum wage are beginning to cave, and have already dropped the main demand of 33 Hong Kong dollars per hour (US$4.25). Representatives of the two main union centres, HKFTU and HKCTU, instead of mounting a mass campaign have already retreated by three dollars in the intensive negotiations underway inside the Provisional Minimum Wage Commission (PMWC).
According to reports from these talks, HK$2, now separates the employers' side - offering HK$28 - from the unions, calling for HK$30. Both sides say they have compromised from their earlier positions and are not prepared to budge any further, sources told the South China Morning Post. Tens of thousands of low paid workers will feel anger and dismay that union representatives have already abandoned their demand for HK$33. While well-paid union leaders may not feel the impact of this in their own wallets, this is not the case for huge numbers of low paid workers in Hong Kong.
As the organisation Socialist Action has explained throughout, even HK$33 per hour is not enough for a worker to survive on in Hong Kong with its sky-high housing costs and price inflation. We think the demand of HK$45 per hour is needed to enable a worker to make ends meet. But when the trade union apparatuses launched a campaign for HK$33, a figure that already represented a major concession to the pressure of business groups with their propaganda about what is "realistic" (realistic for who?), socialists gave critical support to this demand, while stressing the need for a mass campaign for its realisation. Such a mass campaign should encompass street protests, a mass unionisation campaign in low-pay sectors such as fast food, and especially to recruit young workers. It should also include preparations for some form of industrial action to give the HK$33 demand real muscle.
This is why we put forward the demand for a one-day city-wide strike of grassroots workers in the event that the government impose a lower hourly rate. Clearly, such a strike would have to be prepared seriously, with workplace meetings, rallies, and again, by launching a unionisation drive. A one-day strike could transform the situation within the low-wage sectors, giving workers enormous self-confidence to fight for their rights. It would also serve as a warning shot to government and the capitalists that an escalation of action would follow if they did not meet the workers' demands. This concept of a mass campaign is radically different from a campaign that only consists of lobbying government and its "independent" PMWC, although such lobbying is also necessary, as one element, within a strategy based on trade union mobilisation and struggle.
Independent commission?
Far from being truly "independent" the PMWC is a class institution. Of its 12 members only three represent "labour" and these are trade union leaders and bureaucrats whose lifestyles are far removed from the grassroots workers who need the minimum wage. The remaining three-quarters of the commission are drawn from business and academic sectors and government - in other words from the capitalist establishment. Not one voice in the commission directly represents the people the minimum wage is designed to protect. Even its most sympathetic members have only an academic understanding of the problem - sure, they have read some books about poverty!
Among the commission's members are Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong, who is managing director of the Sun Hung Kai Properties Limited. This is one of the largest property conglomerates in Asia and a massive player in Hong Kong's overpriced private housing market. Another commission member is Dr Michael Chan Yue-kwong, the CEO of Cafe de Coral, a fast food chain that pays its workers as little as HK$19.70 per hour. Yet another is Caroline Mak Sui-king, a director of Dairy Farm Group, the company that owns over 4,600 stores in about 10 Asian countries including Wellcome and 7-Eleven in Hong Kong. Mak's company also owns 50% of leading chain restaurant Maxim's, another purveyor of poverty wages. Placing such people on a minimum wage commission is like putting George Bush on a commission for peace and truth!
The commission, in other words, is as far from "neutrality" as conceivable. It is headed by Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah, a wealthy lawyer and president of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, a global organisation that specialises in trying to dupe workers' organisations into renouncing direct struggle and accepting arbitration of their grievances by "experts". Socialists warn that all such ideas, as embodied by Hong Kong's PMWC, are capitalist manoeuvres and should not enjoy the slightest confidence from the working class. This does not mean that we advocate boycotting any and all such institutions; that would depend on whether the working class is in a strong enough position to force through its own direct alternative. But participation in such bodies should be accompanied by mass actions and continual propaganda to expose their real class nature - as enemies of working people.
Need for mass action
Current deliberations inside the PMWC seem to be deadlocked with union leaders refusing to kowtow further, having already lowered their demand to HK$30. Similarly, Mak, Kwok and Michael Chan, leading the capitalists' offensive, seem to have dug in over the figure of HK$28. For union representatives the HK$30 figure is a "line of shame" - putting their name to anything below this would undoubtedly hound them for the rest of their careers. According to the South China Morning Post this deadlock may delay an announcement of the wage level until next month, "or even in Tsang's policy address in October".
Hong Kong's median hourly wage is HK$58.50, so the figure of HK$30 is barely half. The Census and Statistics Department estimates a statutory minimum wage of HK$30 an hour would give wage increases to 347,800 people, or 12.5 per cent of the city's 2.78 million workers and would cost HK$4.8 billion a year. This cost is a trifle considering Hong Kong's GDP was HK$1.63 trillion last year. But a wage floor set at this low level would still leave a vast army of working poor untouched. At least half a million workers in Hong Kong have suffered actual pay reductions since the start of the century.
The minimum wage legislation has already been seriously eroded by the exclusion of 300,000 migrant workers as well as under-18s and workers with disabilities. It is time for trade union organisations to stop their retreat and conduct a real struggle. The first step should be to expose the internal machinations of the capitalists' PMWC. A conference of unions, migrant groups and other grassroots organisations should be called to draw up plans for mass protests. This is the only language the bosses and their political bodyguards understand - the language of mass struggle.
Socialist Action fights for:
* A minimum wage of $33. No compromise, no backing down.
* A minimum wage for ALL workers, regardless of age, nationality or disability.
* Minimum wage of HK$33 now, or unions should call a one-day grass-roots workers' strike.
* Young workers must be unionized. Unions should fight back
* Democratic control of the banks, big business and key industries through public ownership
* Support workers struggle from below, linking the democratic movement and workers' struggle in Hong Kong and China
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