/ Lorie Halliday

HK labor unions say new minimum wage unreasonable

Labor leaders were dissatisfied with the city’s new statutory minimum wage rate at 32.50 Hong Kong dollars an hour, effective on May 1. They vowed to continue their fight for workers’ welfare.

The minimum wage is “unreasonable, especially if the worker is a breadwinner,” Wong Pit-man, head secretary of the Eating Establishment Employees General Union, said last Saturday.

It is short by HK$7.2 from the proposal (HK$39.7/hour) of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, Ip Wai Ming, its deputy director, said Thursday.

Both labor leaders said the minimum wage is barely for survival, “while the government thinks it is enough for one person.”

The federation has its formula in computing the minimum wage to catch up with the inflation rate for a worker and a dependent to afford a standard living.

Since the government began implementing the statutory minimum wage policy in 2011, the HKFTU proposed an increase of minimum hourly rate to HK$33 from HK$28. In 2013, it was raised to HK$30 per hour.

For establishment owners such as M. Aslam, director of the Family Provision and Fast Food Co., HK$32.5 an hour is “still not enough,” considering the high prices of commodities and housing rent.

“No one will want the job. It’s good if it’s HK$40 (an hour),” said Lam, a regular employee of grocery chain, Wellcome, in Kowloon.

Ip Wai Ming, deputy director of Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, says workers are unhappy with the new minimum wage on Feb. 5 in Kowloon.

On the contrary, the minimum wage increase “will benefit tens of thousands of low-income employees and encourage more people to join the labor market,” Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said in his policy address in January.

Hong Kong’s total working population rose to 3.92 million as of 2014 from 3.86 million in 2013, according to government statistical data.

“Just surviving,” minimum wage earners comprise 10 percent of the total number of workers in 2013 after the minimum wage rise, Ip said.

Most of them are cleaners, security guards and health care givers. One-third of them work part time, especially in catering industries, he cited.

Despite the enforcement of statutory minimum wage rate, Wong said workers in the Chinese catering sector only had 2 percent increase of average salary over the past decade.

A large number of workers out of some 8,500 members of EEEGU are underpaid, he said, having long working hours and poor working conditions.

He cited that pantry delivery and cleaning workers have an average salary of HK$8,000 to HK$9,000, dishwashers HK$10,000, waiters/waitress HK$11,000, and Chinese chef HK$18,000.

Meanwhile, not many employers would dare to pay below minimum wage as most citizens are familiar with the labor laws, Ip said. Majority of underpaid workers are immigrants, who are hired for constructions, banquets, and other informal jobs by unregistered agents, he added.

Seeking for higher wages and improvement of working conditions of underpaid workers, the EEEGU had lobbied their concerns to the labor and welfare department. They had also organized meetings with local news reporters to inform the public of their gathered data and cases, Wong said.

For instance, he said, some employers attempted to cut headcounts as an excuse from the minimum wage increase, or cutting paid meal breaks in order to conform with the new wage requirements.

While convincing its members in the government to yield to their demands, the federation will also take it to the streets, Ip said.

Some 5,000 workers will join a mass demonstration on May 1 to push for their proposed minimum wage increase, among other demands, Ip said.

Chan Kwok-cheong has two beds: one for chilly nights and the other for warm weather.

His big roof is the wide bridge that stretches along Tung Chau Street at Sham Shui Po in Hong Kong.

On a Wednesday morning, the 58-year-old man woke up inside a box of plywood strips fully covered with printed tarpaulin.

His head could almost touch the ceiling, as he sat on an old single-sized mattress.

He went outside head first, almost kneeling, and took a couple of steps to reach his second bed at the Temporary Market’s wall.

Sitting on the bed, he placed his cellphone on a wooden table with old newspapers.

An agency, whose name he chose not to disclose, calls him if he gets a job, but it does not happen everyday, he said.

He earns HK$450 by cleaning malls or parks for eight to nine hours a day. Depending on his body condition and mood, he can earn an average of HK$3,500 a month.

Unlike his neighbors, Chinese immigrants and Vietnamese refugees, Chan is entitled of government medical services.

He will also have his own housing unit in the next three years, he said, as he applied for public rental housing in 2012.

The Housing Authority says the average waiting time for general applicants is over three years, while for elderly one-person is nearly two years.

Chan may get a house by 2017, but the waiting list might tell another thing.

There were about 130,200 general applicants for public rental housing as of September, HA says.

To build a 40-storey housing public block takes five years on “spade ready” sites and seven years for a typical public housing development, the authority says. In its report, there were 14,057 housing units produced for 2013-2014.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying earlier pledged to reach the targetted 470,000 units, 60 percent of which for public housing, in the next 10 years.

Chan took a slice of bread with his nicotine-stained fingers and spoke in between biting and chewing without teeth.

“I don’t have problems here, except mosquitoes,” he said, adding that the things he needed most are mosquito coils.

He picked up rubbishes around his area and threw them to nearby trash bins.

His laundryroom, toilet and bathroom are all-in-one at Tung Chau Street Park, right beside the market.

Unthreatened by the government’s order to evacuate, Chan said, “When I’d get the house, I might be dead already.”

Chinese immigrants, Vietnamese refugees and homeless Hong Kong citizens find shelter under the bridge along Tung Chau Street in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong.

Helping to reduce food waste in Hong Kong, food donors are seeking a funding to sustain their operations, Astor Wong, project manager of Food Angel by Bo Charity Foundation, said.

“Like all non-subvented charities, money is always one of the biggest challenges,” she said in an email. Food Angel had saved 752,600 kilograms of surplus food from going to wasteland, and served 1,030,000 meals since March 2011, its website states.

Some 30 small and medium food donation organizations have collected and distributed recycled meat and vegetables to Hong Kong people, said Celia Fung, former environmental affairs officer of Friends of Earth (FOE), a charitable organization here, in a phone interview on Monday.

Having worked with FOE in the last 4 years, Fung said they began advocating food waste reduction in 2010 by pushing markets to donate their surplus foods to organizations that distribute recycled foods, she said.

“The campaign was successful,” she said, however, food donors “cannot put all their efforts in saving food.” She said, as non-profitable groups, they collect and distribute for free, thus, seeking subsidies to be sustainable.

Another challenge that food donors face is the difficulty in persuading commercial sectors to donate food because of safety issues, Fung said.

As for Wong, it takes more time to popularize food donation among industries because the concept of food recycling is “still relatively new in Hong Kong.”

Furthermore, commercial sectors hesitate to donate their surplus foods because there is no law to regulate food donations, including food recycling measures, Fung said. She said non-government organizations have been lobbying policies related to food waste management for three years now, but, the legislative body has other priorities. She added that while accident related to food recycling has not occurred yet, there is no urgency for the government to tackle the issue.

Hong Kong produces an average of 9,000 tons per day (tpd) of municipal solid waste, one-third of which were food waste, Fung said.

Solid waste monitoring reports show that food waste was reduced by 247 tpd, from 3,584 tpd in 2011 to 3,337 tpd in 2012. This was due to reduction of food waste in industrial and commercial waste from 1,056 tpd in 2011 to 809 tpd in 2012.

Fung said the campaign has helped to achieve such decrease in food waste, adding that food donors had served meals to over a thousand families.

On the contrary, the same data show 282 tpd increase in total municipal solid waste from 8,996 tpd in 2011 to 9,278 tpd in 2012. The government is yet to update data on solid waste monitoring in 2013 and 2014.

Meanwhile, environmental experts and officers from 22 Asian countries will exchange views about solid waste management, including food waste, during the Eco Expo Asia-International Trade Fair on Environmental Protection, being held from Oct. 29 to Nov. 1 in Hong Kong, Sum Luk of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council said Monday in a phone interview.

“Food waste remains a big problem in Hong Kong, but it could be solved if people would only get what they can eat,” Jerry Lo, 28, sales executive of Harbour Grand Hong Kong and resident in Tsing Yi, said in an interview.

A man passes by a food shop at Mong Kok, Hong Kong.

Silent protest in a university

By Lorie Ann Cascaro

The corridor outside Jockey Club School of Chinese Medicine Building at Hong Kong Baptist University was empty on a Saturday afternoon. White bond papers with pictures and slogans covered portions of its brick wall. A big poster said in English, “Umbrella Revolution” with a stick drawing of an umbrella beside ’N’.

A gust of autumn wind dragged a few posters to the floor, blowing them back and forth and lifting them a few inches from the tiled floor.

Later, a student, carrying a laundry bag, passed through the corridor. Some papers and dried leaves made crisps beneath her shoes. She glanced at the posters and took a photo of the caricature. It was composed of a man in a face mask, pointing a gun to another, whose hands are above his head.

Adjacent to the corridor was a small lawn planted to a handful of trees. With a baby in her arms, a woman was standing at a corner, and watching a little girl pick up something from the gutter.

Their backdrop was a hanging black cloth with painted Chinese characters, saying that fake suffrage is drinking poison to quench thirst.

[caption id="attachment_114" align="alignnone" width="680"] HKBU protest posters by Lorie Ann Cascaro

Posters on brick wall at HKBU[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_115" align="alignnone" width="680"] CY Leung with horns by Lorie Ann Cascaro

Caricature of HK chief executive CY Leung with horns[/caption]

A drone hovers the protesters at Central on National Day in (Oct. 1, 2015).

More people had filled up last Wednesday the streets in Mong Kok and Central to continue a mass demonstration called ‘Occupy Central’ that demands universal suffrage in choosing Hong Kong’s chief executive in 2017. The protesters held rallies simultaneously, allowing some speakers to express their opinions and emotions.

Children in costume run towards the celebration of National Day held at Tamar Park (September 27, 2015).

A man holds a placard expressing the protesters' opposition to the government along Connaught Road (October 1, 2015).

Occupy Central was on its fourth day during the 65th National Day on Oct. 1, which was a public holiday here. Some protesters witnessed in the morning the flag-raising at Golden Bauhinia Square. South China Morning Post reported that some students made gestures and chanted to show their opposition to the government and chief executive Leung Chun-ying at the ceremony.

"Umbrella Revolution" was coined to represent the movement after the police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters at Central in the evening of Sept. 28 as most of them used umbrellas as shields. Others wore goggles or wrapped themselves with cling film or plastic bags.

Attending the protest last Wednesday morning, David Leung, 30, said Umbrella Revolution was not a ‘real revolution’ because it did not aim for a total change of the system. “We just wanted to get back the promise that we had at the beginning,” he told this reporter. He meant by promise as the exercise of people’s democratic rights. He said he joined the protest without knowing the outcome mainly because he is a resident of Hong Kong and of his love for Hong Kong.

Asked whether or not he supported the call for the chief executive’s resignation, Leung did not directly answer the question. He said, “The next [chief executive] will be same since Hong Kong is part of China.” He added that it is possible to slow down the process of changing Hong Kong as similar to China.

Very difficult, but not impossible

Edwin and Peta McAuley, who owns the Edwin McAuley Electronics, Ltd. in Hong Kong and have lived here for at least 35 years, joined and supported Occupy Central. Walking through Connaught Road last Wednesday, along with his wife and daughter, Edwin McAuley told this reporter, “It is difficult for China to back down, but not impossible.”

Peta McAuley said the best scenario is that protesters would continue to be non-violent so that it could go a long time. “Hong Kong people are doing what they should do, which is taking advantage of the opportunity of freedom of speech,” she said, adding that they have to be patient.

The McAuleys said they had been in several protests in Hong Kong, especially the mobilization to support protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. They were not concerned about having a vote in the Hong Kong government. “I’ve lived here for 35 years without a vote. I am concerned about competent leadership, but one thing that would convince me to leave would be corruption,” Peta McAuley said. She added that what differs Hong Kong from China is the rule of law.

“Democracy”

Tony Tong, 27, from Mei Foo district, said some students joined the strike at first to evade classes, but they learned about democracy during the sit-ins. University students began their strike, which was led among others, by Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism, on Sept. 20. They held sit-ins in parks nearby government offices.

Tong had not joined the protest, but he said it was “the most powerful accumulated energy that I have ever seen.” He said with such “energy”, people can bring peace and food for the world when they persist as it is “really a waste to just ask for a vote.” He said he was touched by the protesters’ courage, but it was “not the time to support” such movement. “I know it is right to want freedom, but I don’t think Hong Kong is that bad,” he said.

“Real democracy is that, at least, there is no restriction to participate in the election of chief executive and everyone has the right to participate in this election,” Marcus Lau, 23, a student in Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said last Saturday. He was watching the program to commemorate in advance the National Day at Tamar Park, while policemen blocked passages to the LegCo Complex at Admiralty.

Lau was supposed to join the sit-ins outside the government headquarter earlier on Saturday. It was the second overnight of the students’ strike that was later supported by Occupy Central protesters. Later, policemen gave way when the program ended and more protesters swarmed to the area.

Lau said he was brave enough to do what other students did Friday night, referring to some students who attempted to enter the government building that led to their arrest. “I think, we only have [this] method to grab the attention from the government,” he said.

The political situation in Hong Kong affected “a little bit” Lau’s plan after graduation. He said he is not attracted to work for the government because his standpoint is not totally the same as that of the government.

While others have decided whether or not to support Occupy Central or Umbrella Revolution, Simon Yau, also a student of HKPU, said he did not support any side but admire the protesters’ braveness to express their opinion against the government.

“Democracy in Hong Kong right now is complex because of too many opinions from different people and different sides,” Yau said, adding that it is difficult to solve the situation. “I don’t know how to solve it, but I want the society to become better. The people should calm down and seek for solutions,” he said.

HK labor unions say new minimum wage unreasonable

At home with the homeless in Sham Shui Po