There are 245 labor unions in the colony, but they lack biting power in wage negotiations. Three have more than 10,000 members each: the seamen’s union; the spinning, weaving and dyeing workers; and the motor transport workers. These three, with the unions of the seafarers, workers in Western-type employment, restaurant and café employees, government workers and teachers, represent 40 percent of all union membership. The unions split into a pro-Communist Federation and a pro-Nationalist Council. The pro-Red unions are strongest among seamen, public utilities, shipyards and textiles; the anti-Reds are most influential in the building trades, food and catering and numerous small industries. Only 25 of the 245 labor unions are free of political leadership. Collective bargaining is generally confined to the transport, printing, and enamelware industries, and to taxi drivers.
Most wages are set by agreement between the worker and his employer; the agreement is verbal and follows no uniform wage-scale. Family connections, references from friends, or the contracting system are used to get jobs. Except in the large shipyards and textile mills, the apprentice system is mostly a matter of observation and imitation. Several private trade schools train boys and girls in various jobs, and Hong Kong Technical College and Hong Kong University teach engineering, commerce and highly advanced technical specialties, with the university giving a full range of professional training. But when all are combined, they fall far short of the demand.
The majority of the colony’s industrial workers impress both employers and outside observers as industrious, purposeful, capable and intelligent. They are unwilling to make bold, independent decisions, some employers complain. On the other hand, they are seldom encouraged to do so.
In the last few years, an increasing number of American businessmen have found the risks and rewards of the colony’s economy well worth their interest. The first American trading concern, Russell & Co., was established there in 1850, but the road was rocky, and Russell, along with several later Yankee traders, faded out of the picture before 1900. About a dozen American companies located agencies in Hong Kong in the early 1900s. Most notable of these was the International Banking Corp., which opened a Hong Kong branch in 1902; after a series of mergers and name changes it became a major branch of the First National City Bank of New York, occupying its own large building in the central financial district.
Except for First National City, Singer Sewing Machine Co., National Cash Register Co. and a few others, most of the American offices were agencies or area representatives until the last decade.
Anker B. Henningsen, a Montana-born businessman of Danish ancestry, came to Hong Kong from China, where his family had been in business since 1913. With his son A. P. Henningsen, he heads a group of companies that distribute Coca-Cola and other soft drinks, export and import women’s wearing apparel, run a quality dress shop called Paquerette, Ltd., and act as agents for a number of American chemical, pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies. They employ 300 people.
The older Henningsen’s father, a Danish immigrant to the United States, had built a prosperous produce business in the Northwest and later supplemented it by shipping eggs from China to the U.S. Eggs came in by the boatload until his competitors sabotaged the business by circulating the canard that the Chinese eggs were hundreds of years old. Mr. Henningsen turned then to Europe for his primary market, but his American produce operations took a beating in the 1919 to 1921 depression. A. B. went out to China in 1923 to start his own ice cream and frozen-drink-on-a-stick business. He had to install refrigeration units in all his retail outlets, working out of a central plant with 3,000 employees. In cold months, he packed and shipped eggs; in summer, he made and sold 125,000 frozen suckers a day. Sticks for the suckers were stamped out of Idaho pine planks, shipped from the U.S. in the form of heavyweight packing crates to avoid lumber duty. It was no small item; the Shanghai plant used 250,000 board feet of Idaho pine a year.
In 1933 he set up a dairy business, imported 500 head of American cattle and a full line of equipment for a modern dairy farm. A few years later, Japanese bombers killed the entire herd. He was president of the American Association and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai when he and 1,500 other Americans were interned by the invading Japanese. As head of the American business community, he was permitted to organize a hospital, school and food facilities for the prisoners. Repatriated to the United States in September, 1943, he operated a dried-egg plant for the Army during the rest of the war. He returned to China after the war, and ran produce and export companies until the Reds began to gain control of the country. Liquidating his interests in China, he came to Hong Kong and organized a soft-drink bottling company in 1948.
He and his son extended branches to Japan, Korea and Taiwan, but closed them down after a time, he said, because he could not find executive personnel capable and willing to run them. He expects Hong Kong to survive and prosper, despite the ever-present threat from Red China.
“Hong Kong is China’s best source of foreign exchange,” Mr. Henningsen says. “If the Reds took it over, the whole economy would collapse, just as it did in Shanghai. The Communists have mismanaged their food supply so badly that their people can’t work. All they get to eat is a small rice ration, a few vegetables, very little fish and no meat at all. If people are underfed, they just die on the vine.”