Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen took people by surprise two weeks ago when he suggested that the civil service move to a five-day working week.
The benefits of this change would be obvious. Our streets would be less crowded and polluted on Saturdays. The government would probably save electricity costs and other office expenses.
Most of all, it would be good for staff morale and people's family lives to have full weekends. People would probably be more productive at work, as a result.
Personally, I'm all in favour of the idea, and if companies in the private sector followed suit, it would be good news for Hong Kong. But not everyone is happy. The retail sector is afraid that it would give people more time to go shopping in Shenzhen. This might be a problem for retailers, but people surely have the right to spend their pay wherever they can get the best value.
Another argument is that private-sector employers who don't adopt a five-day week will be considered mean. Just as shopkeepers have to compete for customers, so employers must compete for staff and work hard to win public goodwill. If a company loses staff or its good reputation because it has a six-day week, that's a problem for its managers.
In some industries - catering, trucking, low-end manufacturing and others - six-day weeks are the norm. The work is low-skilled and labour-intensive and, for many companies, profit margins are slim.
So the five-day week might increase the gap in employment conditions between our more modern and competitive companies, and these low-end ones. That division would, of course, follow the same lines as the already widening wealth gap between rich and poor, skilled and unskilled.
