Inforgraphic of Overtime Work

Want to know more about over-time work and what the solutions are? Please read my essay!!!! :D

Should Hong Kong Implement Standard Working Hours?

           If you ask me what Hong Kong spirit is, “Hard-working” must definitely come to my mind in 3 seconds. Because Hong Kong people is famous for their determination and persistence, these help transform Hong Kong from a small fishing village into an international financial and service centre. However, according to a recent survey conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 40% of respondents working for 70 hours or above per week[1], which is significantly higher than the 40-hour working week suggested by the International Labour Organization (ILO, 1962), so there is a heated debate over the legislation on standard working hours in Hong Kong. In my opinion, it should brook no delays in carrying out this policy.

          Overtime work raises a concern that it may threaten the health of employees, so setting up this policy can ensure the health of workers physically and mentally.  From “European Heart Journal”, it quoted a study[2] that the risk for having heart attack or other heart-related problems will be increased by 60% if you work 10 hours per day. Overtime work but without enough exercising may lead to poorer immune system. Headache, indigestion and high blood pressure are the main symptoms (Zhang, 2007). Last year, a taxi driver was killed at the end of his night shift when his car fell 18 metres from a flyover in Ngau Tau Kok. The police suspect there may be overfatigue or illness causing the accident. Night shift taxi drivers always need to work for 12 hours continuously, so they have poor concentration in the next morning and easily lead to car crash. Moreover, overtime work may cause anxiety, depression and insomnia as well. Therefore, with standard working hours, workers can be healthier to have higher productivity and avoid industrial accidents.

          Also, workers can enjoy more private time after the implementation of standard working hours. Being with families is the fundamental of happiness. Estranged relationship may occur due to lack of communication. Reading an article called “All Worked Up” (Lin, 2013) in Time Out, Chi-keung Lee, a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Tsuen Wan, describing his life as “wake up, go to work, finish work, go home, eat a bit, sleep and then repeat the same cycle the next day”. When he gets home, his son has gone to bed already. Overtime work makes him don’t have much time being with his family. A survey conducted on June in Hong Kong discovered that more than 40% of food industry workers who were interviewed spend less than 15 minutes with their children every day due to employment commitment. When they have holiday, they will choose taking rest rather than having recreation with their friends or families. Therefore, carrying out standard working hours provides cornerstones for workers to mend their relationships in their social circles.

          Moreover, when the standard working hour is set, it may create job opportunities. There are people who are willing and able to work but they are unemployed, but at the same time, there are employees who work for long hours under tired situation. Therefore, assume that the companies do not want to apply overtime pay to the existing staff, they need to hire more workers to do the work in order to compensate the time shifting between staff. As a result, the unemployment rate would be lower since job opportunities are provided due to the legislation on standard working hours.   

          Apparently, the business sector has the strongest opposition towards this issue because regulating working hours may not be applicable to different industries due to the nature of the carrier, such as teachers, doctors and merchants. Also, they refute that it may increase the production cost and earn less profit for their enterprises. 

          The most obvious disadvantage that the business sector raised is proposing standard working hours will retard the economic growth in Hong Kong. According to a study conducted by the Labour Department, if the standard working hours per week is 40 hours, the estimated number of employees will be affected is 238000, it occupied 91.9% of full-time employed workers (Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre, 2013). Lower wages and profits will be received by the workers and enterprises respectively. Ostensibly, working fewer hours will earn less money, but with shorter working time, employees can be more concentrated on their own works with fewer mistakes and errors, so their working performance are better. Therefore, the companies can earn a higher revenue by using the least time to make the most money, more bonus can be distributed. As a result, the economic growth will not be slowing down.

          Second, the enterprises are worried about the increase in production cost. Because companies need to employ more people, and sometimes even using expensive machines to replace labour in order to fulfil the standard working hours. Moreover, workers have to receive overtime rate when they need to work longer hours, which must be more than the regular rate. It will put pressure on companies’ financial status. However, it will only happen in the short run since companies will find ways to rearrange work flow in a more efficient manner in the long run (Siu, 2013). Workers will have stronger motivation to finish their works within the limited time.  To be more concrete, the long working hours for people is ascribed to the problem of the system. Let me raise a Hong Kong example. The reason why doctors in Hong Kong need to work uninterruptedly is they are adopting the “on-call arrangement”. When there is no working time limit, the organization will not have incentives to improve the current situation. However, when the standard working hours is implemented, since the number of doctors has been increased a lot after the establishment of Hospital Authority, the hospitals will estimate the total working hours according to the number of patients and amount of workloads to employ enough doctors to shorten the working time. Furthermore, overtime pay must be higher than regular pay. As a result, production cost will be lower in the long run.

          In addition, people may argue that standard working hours could hamper industries from adjusting swiftly to market changes (Wong, 2009). If there is a big but temporary increase in demand, enterprises cannot request existing workers to work beyond the maximum working hours, so the working hours for production stage is inflexible. Yet, it does not mean that people cannot work beyond the standard working hours because there is overtime pay. In Germany, companies will try to have a collective agreement with employees. In Thailand, employees’ prior consent is required. As a result, Hong Kong can refer to the foreign examples to draw up the policy.

          Although economic development is important to show how strong their own countries or cities are, there is always one question that we should ask ourselves: Should we sacrifice people’s health to overtake the economic growth? Hong Kong ranked third in the World Competitiveness Ranking 2013 (International Institute for Management Development, 2013), just behind the strongest country USA and Switzerland, but both countries also have working hours limit. If we want to make our city more powerful and Hong Kong people happier, standard working hours policy should be carried out in no doubts.

         
Reference list

1.      A survey conducted by the Family and Group Practice Research Centre from Department of Social Work, The   Chinese University of Hong Kong
Available at: http://web.swk.cuhk.edu.hk/en/?id=2442&

2.      ILO, “Preamble, Reduction of Hours of Work Recommendation”, (1962, June 26)

       Available at: http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:R116

3.      A study which has been conducted for 10 years, where there were 6000 British functionaries were involved
Available at: http://work.chron.com/disadvantages-overtime-5388.html

4.      Zhang, J. (2007, July). Overtime work is harmful, Common Health Magazine(104)
Available at: http://www.commonhealth.com.tw/article/article.action?id=5019769

5.      Cheung, S. (2012, 9 10), “Taxi driver dies after car plunges 18 metres off flyover in Ngau Tau Kok”, South China Morning Post 

Available at: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1033011/taxi-driver-dies-after-car-plunges-18-metres-flyover-ngau-tau-kok

6.      Lin, K. S. (2013, July 17), “All worked up”, Time Out
Available at: http://www.timeout.com.hk/big-smog/features/59645/all-worked-up.html

7.      Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre, “Working Time Has Standard?”, (2013, April 26)
Available at: http://www.bauhinia.org/analyses_content.php?id=30

8.      Siu, P. (2013, April 1). “Standard work hours ‘won’t cost more’ in the long run.”, South China Morning Post
Available at: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1204190/standard-work-hours-wont-cost-more-long-run

9.      Leung, K. (2011, March 15). “Standard working hours for doctors”, Apple Daily
Available at: http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/20110315/15076079

10.  Wong, Y. (2009). Firms and Production: Legislation on Maximum Working Hours in Hong Kong. (p. 57). Hong Kong: Pearson Education Asia Limited.

11.  International Institute for Management Development, “IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook”, (2013), p.10
Available at: http://www.imd.org/uupload/imd.website/wcc/scoreboard.pdf

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[1] A survey conducted by the Family and Group Practice Research Centre from Department of Social Work, The   Chinese University of Hong Kong
   Source: http://web.swk.cuhk.edu.hk/en/?id=2442&

[2] A study which has been conducted for 10 years, where there were 6000 British functionaries were involved
   Available at: http://work.chron.com/disadvantages-overtime-5388.html

What Should I Major In?

      I guess this is the most difficult question I have ever met: What major I should study next year? It makes me so distressed because there are two courses that I am really interested in. However, I must choose one between the two majors. These two majors are totally different in terms of their categories. One is an Arts discipline, while another is a Social Sciences discipline, so which one I should choose?

     

     I always consider Psychology as a mysterious discipline since when I was small, I believed that I could read people's minds after studying it. Moreover, I have watched a police serial drama called "Every Move You Make", which is produced by TVB. It talks about the police using the knowledge of applied psychology in assisting solving criminal cases. For examples, when your eyes are moving to the left while you are talking with someone, it implies that you are telling lies. Also, when your legs are crossed while there is someone standing beside you, it means you are having a good or even close relationship with that person. Therefore, by observing people's pattern, I can know the implications behind those behaviours. It is so fascinating to me, so that's why I want to study Psychology. 

     At the same time, I like words and languages. I really appreciate those people who have invented words to facilitate communication among people, and it acts as a function for our ancestor to record their lives and knowledge, so as to pass on to future generations to learn their history and wisdom to avoid making the same mistakes. In addition, I have a habit to do language conversion. For example, when I am watching TV, I will convert those Chinese words into English in my mind to see if it suits the official English subtitles. On one hand, I find that this process is a very good way for me to get away from boredom. On the other hand, it can enhance my language ability in terms of reading, writing and speaking. As a result, I want to learn Translation since it is also a special technique with its own formula to covert words and languages.

     In order to make it easier to choose my major, I am going to sort into some perspectives to compare and contrast these two majors. 

     From the career prospect, studying Translation is better than Psychology. Language skills are very important to many employers and companies. They will have a good impression on me if they know I studied Translation as I am going to be a proficient communicators capable of helping them to build up a good relationship with companies in other countries. Moreover, there are a variety of translation studies for me to choose, such as legal, commercial and media translation, etc. so I can participate in various professions. Furthermore, I can be a primary school teacher in teaching languages if I really cannot find any job occupations related to translation. However, in Hong Kong society, unless I got a PhD in Psychology, it is very hard for me to become a psychologist, such as clinical or counselling psychologist. I am not sure if I am able to study PhD with heavy workloads.

     In the view of my ability, I have the comparative advantage of studying Translation instead of Psychology. For translation, it emphasizes on thinking analytically and critically because Translation is not only about language conversion, it discusses Chinese and western culture as well, so as to help ourselves be more culturally diverse and confident when working with international people. We need to appreciate others' cultures and customs in order to communicate more effectively. Nevertheless, Psychology is to investigate humans' minds and behaviours from the functions of brains by having scientific research. Studying theories is not enough, the biggest challenge for me is to do calculation and analyzing data and having experiments in laboratories, which is I am very weak in. 

     However, studying Psychology can help me to face people with different personalities, so it will avoid conflicts in a certain extent, but Translation may not have this kind of effect. For example, by studying a lot of psychological cases with patients having abnormal behaviour, we can have some remedies to talk to these people appropriately. Moreover, by observing humans' actions and the ways they talk, we can know their characters to minimize the unnecessary quarrels. It could be very useful in our future workplaces. But for Translation, it doesn't have a systematic way to categorize human's behaviours, it only teaches us how to communicate in a more fluent and beautiful way. 

     Furthermore, with the knowledge of Psychology, I can help people to face their psychological disorder and finally overcome their obstacles, but studying Translation cannot equip myself with this kind of professional knowledge. Recently, my junior, Zoe, would probably be diagnosed as a patient of “mood disorder”. She said she could not control her emotions effectively. She could cry alone suddenly in her own room without any reasons. I believe the factors that contribute her to have this mental illness are her own studies and relationship problem. I don’t know how to help her because I am not well-trained in the area of Psychology, but I suggest her to seek help from the social workers or teachers at school. Therefore, I think I will be very proud of myself if I can use the applied psychology to give advice to people who have close relationship with me but suffered from mental illness, like my friends, even my family.

     From the above, there are both pros and cons on choosing these two majors. I may not make up my mind yet, but at least I think I know more about what kind of people I am.

Guess Where I've Been!

  Emitting sounds here was like you were committing a crime. You would probably be stared by the others' fierce eyes full of hatred. Their eyes were telling you, "It is a dangerous place if you don't behave yourself!" The air from the air-conditioner was bone chilling wind, making my body kept quivering. Therefore, in order to keep myself warm, I started to have a stroll to look around here. 

    The bookcases were arranged neatly, like queuing up in the playground. I walked into the oversize circulation, most of the books were covered by dirt. Some of the front covers of those old books were torn. Suddenly, I heard there was something kept on buzzing around my ears and flying around my face. I really hoped that it wouldn't fall in love with me. I could hear my heartbeats and they became faster and faster. I was even not dare to move. Luckily, the vampire bloodsucker was not interested in me. Instead, it left and found another target to sustain its life. When I was turning over the pages, flies were coming out from it and those dusts are allergic to me, causing me to cough. "Ha-choo!" It was guilty when I was producing such a loud voice, so I crept up and left, trying to avoid making any noise.

     After that, I left there and travelled around here again. I came across to the printing room. The smell of the ink permeated the room and the corridor. Students were lining up for the fast print. The queue was as long as the dragon with no end. People started to find distraction from boredom. Many of them became smartphone addicts and having fun with their mobile phones, such as playing facebook, Instagram. They had a habit that uploading a photo on their status and grumbling in the caption, saying that "How come our school is a miser? I don't need you to save money for us!" Some of them were having chit-chat with their friends while they were waiting to print their notes. However, their whispers annoyed those who were sitting beside them, trying to concentrate their revision. "Shu......" It really grasped their attention but there was no influence on them. Those at the back were snoozing, like they were enjoying their fantasy because their snoring were quite obvious.

    I went back to the study carrel to continue my revision. Students around me were having stacks of reference books beside them. It seemed that If they haven't finished reading those books, they were not going to leave. Everybody were afraid of being left behind from others. Of course, not all of them were that hard-working. Some students were waiting for their lessons, but they didn’t know how to spend the time before their lectures, so some of them were sleeping happily on the sofa. The saliva were drooling from their mouths to the floor. In order to kill time, most of the boys were sitting in front of their computers. Playing action games with lots of body gestures, they moved around their arms and legs and hit the keyboard to have a better result. However, for those who really wanted to have a computer to do research for their assignments were forced to leave disappointingly. I could see fire from their eyes but they were just trying to suppress their temper.

    At here, not only reading, but witnessing.