Hong Kong: bar benders strike longest industrial action in 30 years

Hong Kong's six to eight hundred bar benders -- those are the guys who along with the welders assemble on site the girders which make possible all those high-rise buildings -- are now in their 23rd day of strike action. This is the longest such action in Hong Kong in thirty years.

The strike has now spread to around 100 construction sites -- up from 60 last week.

According to reports, members of the community, including Cathay Pacific flight attendants, have donated money, fruit and bottles of distilled water. A fund set up to help the strikers has already reached HK$360,000.

The strike pits employees against bosses. Nothing new there.

But a little bit of history might help: in 1997, the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) negotiated pay cuts down from a daily wage of HK$1,200 to the grand sums of between HK$500 and HK$800 a day.

Now, ten years later, the pro-democracy labour group Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (CTU) has got behind a workers' campaign for a pay rise: a uniform daily wage of HK$950 (that's the same rate as paid in 1994).

Plus a cut in working hours from nine to eight hours. Plus backing Nepalese construction workers who are calling for equal pay, saying their HK$450 daily pay is discriminatory. Which it is.

The two union groups have been competing to represent the interests of the striking workers. Meanwhile, the Government is desperately trying not to get involved. And the employers' representative group, the Hong Kong Construction Association? It says there isn't the money for a HK$950 daily rate. But they would say that, wouldn't they?

Anyway, to put some flesh on those numbers . . . a poem by Mr. Xin, a metal worker:

My wrath is on government-business collusion,
As we laborers toil through sweltering heat and fierce rainstorms.
Our deeds are done on dusty sites and we often work right into the night.

For the rest of Mr. Xin's poem and its literary antecedents: Alice Poon