The report ('Broken by the law', March 9) noted the unfavourable reaction from many Hong Kong businessmen to the enforced protection of factory workers' rights, now being gradually introduced on the mainland. This protection is long overdue and simply provides for written contracts, (low) minimum wages, daily overtime limits and fair dismissal terms. Such employment laws exist in many parts of the world and are stronger in enlightened countries, but not in Hong Kong. It must be a matter of regret that here, in a much richer place, there is still no similar protection for workers, from Scrooge-like local employers, in some of these areas. In Guangdong province, many Hong Kong employers (of 9.6 million processing plant workers), object to these new safeguards, claiming that they are bad for business. It is not these basic protective rules which are bad, but instead what is shocking is the slave labour mentality which considers huge profits for Hong Kong factory owners should be built on the backs of exploited Guangdong workers. The living and working conditions of these modern-day serfs are horrific and they earn scandalously low wages. A monthly wage for a family man working in a Guangdong factory would barely cover the cost of a business lunch for his Hong Kong employer. There is nothing wrong with making a profit. What is wrong is making unacceptably large profits for the few here in Hong Kong, generated by the long hours of unpleasant work by seriously underpaid and under-protected staff in another place. That represents the unacceptable face of capitalism, and we all ought to be ashamed of it. To add insult to injury, it is the get-rich-quick approach of these Hong Kong owners of Guangdong factories which ignores the environmental degradation they cause, and which pollutes the very air we all breathe here in Hong Kong. Has the Hong Kong government the courage and will to seriously address these disgraceful shortcomings, in what Hong Kong factory owners are allowed to do to thousands of Chinese people, and to the environment? Rob Leung, Wan Chai
