The International Journal of Human Resource Management 8:5 October 1997 Reversion to China: implications for labour in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper outlines the labour-market shifts and adjustments which Hong Kong experienced on the eve of its reversion to China in July 1997. It argues that these adjustments, varying from acute problems of labour shortage in the late 1980s to new perils of unemployment menacing the local work-force in the mid-1990s, can be traced to the core imperative of the 'China' factor. This paper notes, in addition, that the fluidity of the pre-1997 labour market was compounded by the trendy moves of corporate businesses to downsize and rationalize their human resource provisions so as to strengthen their competitiveness, as well as popular actions adopted by a politically emasculated administration to democratize the government and the legislature. As a result, hastily introduced electoral reforms have politicized the fragmented labour movement in Hong Kong, because of rival attempts by the pluralist and competitive trade union centres to appeal to the support of the grass-roots voters among the labouring mass. The pre-1997 syndrome of polarized political tussle between organized labour and management poses a formidable and impelling agenda for the new Government. This may include, inter alia , the tasks of rebuilding a more proficient human infrastructure to support the restructuring economy and alleviating labour-capital tension with an enhanced tripartite Labour Advisory Board- backed, possibly, by organized labour's prudent search for a more accommodative approach characteristic of Asian trade unionism.

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