Thursday, January 6, 2011

Hong Kong's Minimum Wage Effective as of 1 May 2011

Hong Kong has finally confirmed that they will set the minimum wage to HKD28 per hour as they have conveyed previously to take steps to address their income gaps. They are of course people who are for and against it. For those who are against it, they usually use the "free market principle" as the reason.

My question to them is this. Did they think of this "free market principle" during the 2008 Great Recession? Didn't the government intervention helped recover the economy?

Free market? Yeah right. If you pay your workers what they are worth, then you should have nothing to worry about. Some say that it's too little, but that should be no excuse to not implementing this law. I personally felt that HKD28 was used to allow time for the businesses to adapt to this change. That was the concession given by the Hong Kong government to the businesses as they understand that they will need time to adapt to this law.

Personally, I felt that this minimum wage law will force businesses to be more productive as they can no longer use cheap labour to drive their businesses profit margins. There will always be more productive ways that can be used. The question is whether you and your business are willing to change.

Now. Will Singapore take care of their workers? Hmm...

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