Colours of Money, Shades of Pride: Historicities and Moral Politics in Industrial Conflicts in Hong Kong

1. Introduction

Introduction During the first two weeks of June 1986, an unprecedented strike and sit-in broke ou t a t th e Japa n Watc h Multinationa l (JWM ) i n Hon g Kong . I t erupted spontaneously after thirty-six workers were fired on 31 May. Or was it nineteen? In the papers of 1 June, about two-thirds of the reports stated that thirtysix had been fired; the other third reported nineteen. By 4 June, some papers reported tha t seventee n more had been fired, bringing the total to thirty six , but that only raised another question: Had they been fired on 31 May or later? And where did these conflicting reports come from anyway? Though I had been involved in the strike from the beginning, as a volunteer at the Tsuen Wa n Labou r Servic e Centr e (hereafter , th e Centre ) an d wa s a n anthropology graduate student conducting research on factory work in Hong Kong, it was not until a series of interviews conducted long after the strike that I was able to solve the puzzle of the numbers. By interviewing the journalists involved, I learned that those who had reported ninetee n go t thei r informatio n fro m JW M management , whil e those who reported thirty-six got their number from the workers. Why th e discrepancy? Some of the workers gave the following explanation . 2฀ Colours of Money, Shades of Pride Management ha d meticulously planned thi s 'wholesale slaughter' A t a carefully selected moment, with videotaping teams in tow, a tactical firing team bega n handing out dismissa l envelopes on th e seventh floor , wher e the workers were least organized The y planned on firing selected worker s on the first, third, and sixth floors m sequence, finally ending on the second floor where the workers were best organized T o prevent th e workers fro m reacting, th e firing tea m attempte d t o expel th e workers from eac h floo r before proceedin g t o th e nex t However , on e o f th e fire d seventh-floo r workers managed to wave her dismissal envelope in front of the momentarily open doors of the second floor Thi s action alerted the second-floor workers, who stood up, looked at each other, rushed up the staircase, occupied th e 'office', an d began their sit-in and strike Thus, the strike began before anyone on the second floor had actuall y been fired S o how did the workers determine how many were being fired7 It turns out tha t on e of them had found dismissa l envelopes addressed t o seventeen second-floor workers hidden in a usually locked conference room Together with the nineteen already fired, that made thirty-six Despit e the fact that they had never formally been fired, some of these seventeen workers decided to leak the number 'thirty-six' to the press in order to demonstrate the full extent of the management's actions and thereby increase the sense of outrage and solidarity among the striking workers Managemen t first tried to cover up their actions by only admitting to firing nineteen, but eventually decided to admit to the total of thirty-six Much remains to be told about thi s inciden t — i n which more tha n 300 femal e worker s and thei r families, fro m th e rura l are a of Pat Heung , were involved, and which accounted for more than 50 percent of the total annual working days lost to strikes in the enclave, according to the officia l record — bu t a t the very least the journalistic version o f it demonstrate s that the 'basic facts' of the strike, as reported in the press, are anything but transparent Th e 'fact' of the number of workers fired was the result of the interplay betwee n strategi c construction s o f realit y o n th e par t o f som e workers and certain factions within the management A s an opening, this incident introduces both the central event which this book analyses — the Introduction 3฀ JWM strike — and, more importantly, my theoretical understanding tha t social 'reality' i s continually constructe d an d reconstructed fro m multipl e perspectives in a...