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Maid in the shade, Hong Kong
style
By Gary LaMoshi
HONG
KONG - The German tourist befuddled the pair of helpful
young men at the visitor's bureau information desk with
his question: "All those young girls yesterday ... what
were they doing here?" I overheard the question and the
silence and stopped to lend an old hand.
"Those
are the maids, mainly from the Philippines."
"The ones eating and dancing ...?"
"Right. Sunday is their day off, and they don't
have their own houses, so they have a party in the
street." Anyone who's seen the amahs turn Central
Hong Kong into their kampong every Sunday has to be
impressed with the unabashed joie de vivre
unleashed in an otherwise dull, gray downtown. The
Sunday Amah-rama would be a great event for
tourism officials to hawk, especially since the Hong
Kong government keeps trying to put foreign amahs
on the endangered-species list.
Winning
policy for losers
An overwhelming majority of
Hong Kong's 240,000 domestic workers come from the
Philippines, with Indonesia and Sri Lanka providing the
next-biggest contingents. A few local Chinese still work
the trade, but attempts to train the unemployed to take
these jobs have repeatedly failed. But amah
bashing is a rare political winner for Tung Chee-hwa's
local government.
After the initial shock of the
Asian crisis hit Hong Kong in 1998, the government found
it had no policy answers as regional markets collapsed
and the air escaped from the pre-handover bubble. The
price of property, where many families invested their
savings on faith of ever-rising values, fell, and people
felt poorer.
The government proposed attacking
the heart of the economic problem: cut amah
wages. It dressed up the idea by saying that the value
of currencies in the amahs' home countries had
fallen, so the wage cut would keep their salaries in
line with the new values. The 5 percent cut took monthly
wages down from HK$3,860 to HK$3,670 (US$496 to US$472).
That extra HK$190 in Hong Kong middle class pockets
wasn't enough to buy dinner for two, but it proved
wildly popular.
Tung's government proposed a
second round of wage cuts in 2001, but an outcry from
worker advocacy groups beat it back. Proponents were too
embarrassed by the obvious meanness and pettiness of the
proposed cut to HK$3,200 to put up a major fight. But a
popular, bad idea never goes away; it just awaits a new
opportunity.
With the Hong Kong budget bleeding
red ink, the government slapped a HK$400-per-month tax
on employers of foreign domestic workers. As part of the
new tax regime, employers are authorized to deduct the
tax from their employees' wages. So amahs are
looking at a HK$400 pay cut in all contracts signed from
April 1. (The tax, by the way, won't take effect until
October 1, giving Hong Kong employers a six-month nest
egg to keep for themselves.)
Foreign domestic
policy
Hong Kong amahs are part of the
Philippines' biggest export and foreign currency earner:
overseas workers. So Philippine President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo has stuck herself in the middle of this
latest flap with Hong Kong. She appealed to the Hong
Kong government not to impose the wage cut. Tung's
administration ignored the plea.
In retaliation,
the Philippines slapped a temporary ban on sending maids
to Hong Kong. Indonesia also has a temporary hold in
place for unrelated reasons. There's more bluff than
bite in these bans, since neither country wants to stop
citizens from going overseas and sending money home in
favor of keeping them in an overcrowded domestic
employment pool. The ban received a mixed reaction from
Philippine advocacy groups in Hong Kong, some saying the
order leaves amahs nearing the ends of contracts
unnecessarily confused.
Most amahs I've
talked to don't seem that confused about what's
happening. "Chinese people don't like us," one said. "So
they pay us less." Even with another HK$400 knocked off
their wages, most Hong Kong amahs concede they
couldn't earn nearly as much money back home. So they'll
stay as long as they can, and put up with what they
must.
Hong Kong better hope they do.
Somewhat foreign domestic policy
The
reason there are Philippine amahs in Hong Kong is
that, during colonial times, residents of another nearby
country with a large population of poor people that
would like to work in Hong Kong were not allowed to
enter the territory. Today, despite the 1997 handover
from British to Chinese sovereignty, immigration between
Hong Kong and the big motherland remains tightly
regulated. But pushing the amah too far could be
bad for everyone if it leads to replacing Philippine
workers with ones from the mainland.
Hong Kong
people are nasty toward people from the Philippines, but
they harbor even worse ideas about mainlanders, their
own northern roots notwithstanding. But every time Hong
Kong pushes this issue into the spotlight brings it
closer to the day some bright light in the mainland will
say, "If Filipinas don't want the jobs in Hong Kong, our
people do." Beijing's poodles running the government in
Hong Kong don't yet know how to stand up to their
masters when they launch bad ideas.
An extra
quarter of a million mainlanders in Hong Kong, replacing
the Philippine workers, would have a noticeable impact
on Hong Kong. It would make Hong Kong that much closer
to being just another Chinese city, and a pretty dull
one at that, where a lot fewer people spoke English.
(Nearly all amahs speak English; the elite among
them also speak Cantonese.)
Just think of the
difference it would make to Sunday afternoons. Instead
of the gospel sermons and line dancing to boom boxes, I
suspect there would a lot more men with crew cuts
talking into their newspapers, on the lookout for
subversive activity.
(©2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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