Executive Summary
Since the 1990s Hong Kong has transformed from a manufacturing site to a global financial and sourcing hub. Local manufacturing activities have moved out of the territory scouring for the cheapest labour sources in Mainland China and other low-cost countries in the region of Southeast Asia. The displaced women workers, who were cast out of manufacturing industries, found themselves situated in the lowest rung of the labour market. The only job opportunities offered to them were in the service sector as a low paid, unskilled workers working long hours.

The ideology of neo-liberalism has prevailed in Hong Kong right from the colonial government. But even after the return to sovereignty to China in 1997, the new government continued the same practice. The government has been adopting a non-interventionist policy with the principle of keeping a minimal government but a large market. Privatisation of public services in the form of outsourcing and corporatisation are two main strategies adopted to make the doctrine of minimal government possible.

Public housing has a long history of outsourcing services to private companies. Since 1987, the Housing Authority (HA) has contracted out cleaning services and security related services. The pace of privatisation increased in late the 1990s with the whole management being contracted out. This was in line with the push to downsize the government. The HA has been confined to playing a monitoring role. The main concern of the management is cutting costs and it has no concern for the welfare of workers. Therefore, with greater use of contract-out practices, the working condition of cleaning workers is deteriorating.

The sub-contracted cleaning workers (SCCW) are mainly middle-aged women who have migrated to Hong Kong from Mainland China as spouse of local men. It is clear that SCCWs are being exploited for their multiple identities as migrant workers as well as working mothers. SWWCs not only suffer from low wages and long working hours, they are also deprived of labour welfare and protection enjoyed by ordinary Hong Kong workers because they do not know how to safeguard their rights. Their plight is compounded by the fact that they are the principal family wage earners. The double burden as a working mother restricts their choices of jobs. They need jobs which are near to their homes to make it possible for them to take care of their families. With limited choices in jobs, their bargaining power is seriously hindered.

The characteristic of SCCWs makes traditional organising approaches unsuitable to reach them and respond to their needs. The roles played by SCCWs make it almost impossible for them to join trade union activities. In fact, for most SCCWs their activities are restricted to the community in which they live. They are not familiar with other areas. The only way to reach these SCCWs is to visit them at their place of work, instead of waiting for them to take the initiative.

From our previous experiences, we find that the most effective period to organise SCCWs is at the time when the contract between the HA and the private company has expired. The employers no longer have power over the workers. So, without the fear of losing their jobs and livelihoods, SWWCs are more willing to expose the wrongdoings of the employers. However, this approach makes it difficult for us to mobilise SCCWs to strive for better working conditions to the incumbent employers.

Community organising strategy has a twofold rationale. Given the power imbalance between workers and employers, this approach involves other social forces in the community. This is a viable way to tip the balance to the advantage of SCCWs. The second rationale is to involve the government. The Government is supposed to take up the role of monitoring contracting-out of public services. But the government simply turns a blind eye to the wrongdoings of tender companies. It is felt that exposing the inhumane working conditions and widespread violation of labour laws would pressurise them to take action in favour of SCCWs.
The new strategy of community organising was first implemented in a Public Housing Estate (PHE) where residents were low-income families living in government-owned houses. The SCCWs were usually residents living in the same PHE in which they were working. Adopting the new approach saw the multiple identities of SCCWs as an asset in establishing bonds with other residents, since the commonalties of their situations as workers suffering from low pay, intense workloads, and neighbours striving for the well being of the community came to fore. Appealing to the empathy and support of residents is an essential part of the community organising strategy

Together with university students of a grass-root oriented group, we applied the community organising approach to a PHE where we received complaints that after a new company had taken over the cleaning service, workers wages had dropped from 24% to 33%, while their workloads had increased tremendously.

In this case, our work was fourfold.

1. Mobilising workers: SCCWs in the PHE played an active role by taking part in meetings with residents, recruiting neighbours to sign the petition, speaking out via the mass media. They were empowered by the support and the positive response from the society. They no longer felt ignored and in a weak position.
2. Mobilising residents in the community: We tried to establish linkages between residents and SCCWs in a three pronged manner. The first prong was to create an idea of fair deal; if we want high quality of hygiene, we should treat workers fairly in terms of wages, working hours and working conditions. The second one was to cultivate a sense of community by emphasising that workers are part of the community. The third one was to build a common identity of working class among residents and SCCWs. We organised surveys, signature campaigns and meetings to facilitate greater understanding, among the residents, of the working conditions of SCCWs, and to foster exchanges among them.
3. Mobilising local forces in the community: There are many local forces in the community e.g. district councillors, resident committees and resident groups in PHEs, which play an influential role in matters concerning cleaning services. We approached them for support.
4. Pressure from the General Public: We joined forces with others to ally with broader social forces to exert more pressure to the government. These comprise Oxfam Hong Kong, university scholars, like-minded trade unions and individuals.

The HA had to take action in the face of strong criticism. As a result, SCCWs received the higher wage stipulated in the contract, and the tender company had to terminate the contract with short notice to avoid punishment.

This issue set in motion a policy change in the government sector. Finally, the government decided to set up a wage system stipulating that wages in government contracts should not be lower than the average wage in the private market in similar occupations. A new monitoring system was also put forth to have better supervision of tender companies.

The community organising campaign is an attempt in response to the particular adverse situation of most vulnerable workers. By soliciting support from broader social forces in the community as well as from society in large, marginal workers such as SCCWs are able to have a better position to bargain with employers.

With the accelerating pace of privatisation in public services, the interests of SCCWs, residents and government employees will be interwoven. For instance, the welfare of public housing residents will be endangered if the disinvestment in retail and car parking facilities materialises. The labour rights of government employees will be affected because their jobs would be endangered by privatisation. All this shows that people of lower classes share the same plight of exploitation and suppression imposed by privatisation policies. In this context, a broader alliance of groups working for protection of labour rights and campaigning against privatisation is necessary.