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March 22, 2010

<收入及工時按年統計調查報告 : Some comments>

Part 1

Note : I am NOT against this report. Amongst all government departments, Census and Statistics Department is one of the most reliable. Not because it is objective per se, but mainly because it has to follow many international standards for compiling the statistics, so that there is little room for them to “mauipulate” things around.

But I AM against Minimum Wage.

The point of this whole entry is to highlight some issues that are too easy to be missed. I will also cover some of their implications on the findings.

1. Hours of work

— I read the report for a number of times more. Still cannot find any table showing the number of working hours.

— But I manage to find the definition on the hours of work :

Number of working hours paid for in the survey period was collected in 2009 AEHS. It refers to the sum of :

(i) number of contractual/agreed working hours; and

(ii) number of paid overtime hours.

Number of contractual/agreed working hours is the number of working hours in accordance with the contract of employment, or with the agreement or at the direction of the employer. Rest time and meal break, if no work is done or to be done during the time period concerned, is not included in the number of contractual/agreed working hours. (Italics are mine)

So, you know what I am going to say, right? Anyone working in Hong Kong, except civil servants (who are excluded from the report’s coverage) has to work overtime, unpaid. The issue is not “yes or no”, but “more or less”.

Contractual hour of employment, therefore, must be lower the hour directed by the employer. Furthermore, effective or actual working hours are even larger : You have to meet this deadline, so, you don’t really need employers’ direction to work over time. There is no agreement, nor being written in the contract of employment. Working over-time, on an unpaid basis, is just automatic.

One prominent example is the junior worker in the so-called Big-4 account firms. Look at some discussion in 高登 here.

Since the hourly wage is simply wage / hours of work, using the contractual hours of employment or the agreed hours or the directed hours, which are all lower than effective working hours, will give you a higher “nominal” hourly wage.

In other words, were the higher number of actual hours of work be used, the hourly wage so computed will be lower.

— So the next question is : Should the actual hours be used? Let me ask you one very simple question :

How many hours of work did you have in each of the past 4 weeks?

I can only give you a rough idea. The answer to this simple question is not so simple, and inevitably involves guess, range-estimates, and probably other methods that are less reliable than, at least, the contractual hours of work. So I am of the view that the way of defining hours of work (through contractual working or agreed hours, which are more reliable and can sometimes be proved by evidence) is acceptable.

But, the difference against actual wage should be borne in mind (which is not in the report), and I believe for comparison purpose, a set of hourly wage data (to the simplest level) basing on actual working hour should be compiled (which is also absent in the report).

—–

There are several more parts to go. Given that this site is a Twitter-like xanga, I try to keep post as short as possible.