HONG KONG -- Hong Kong's newly elected lawmakers, who promised last month to listen closely and fight for the less fortunate, threw out two motions calling for more workers' rights and welfare yesterday.
As expected, the two nonbinding motions failed to get through because they were not backed by probusiness legislators who make up half of the 60-member chamber.
The legislators were returned in elections last month for a four-year term. Hong Kong's complicated electoral system, which favors pro-Beijing and probusiness candidates, ensured they won 35 seats. Prodemocracy politicians took 25 seats although they won 62 percent of the popular vote.
The first motion called for the Beijing-backed administration to protect workers with a minimum wage and maximum working hours, which do not sit well with the government in Hong Kong, a financial hub that prides itself on not interfering with market forces.
''In the last few years, employers have cut wages and told workers to work longer hours, and workers have followed suit to keep their jobs," said Chan Yuen-han, who sponsored the motion.
''Wages have fallen to levels that are unacceptably low . . . which is a shame for a place like Hong Kong," said Chan of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong.
Recent surveys showed the city's nearly seven million people were most concerned about the economy after long periods of slowdown since the Asian financial crisis of 1997.
According to social workers, wages of the lowest 10 percent of wage earners have fallen to $500 a month from $630 in 1997 (in US dollars), while earnings of the highest 10 percent have risen to $7,300 from $6,640.
The heated debate lasted more than four hours and drew an impassioned speech from radical activist ''Longhair" Leung Kwok-hung, who swept into the legislature in the September elections with support from his working-class supporters.
Leung, who has been jailed a few times for disrupting legislative sittings with his protests, ignored protocol by wearing a red Che Guevara T-shirt in the chamber.
He related anecdotes exposing the poverty that lay beneath the veneer of the rich, capitalist city.
''Hong Kong is now famous for its poverty. I know a woman who works all day cleaning out rubbish for [$330] a month," said the veteran street protester in his loud booming voice. ''Her daughter, who could not bear to see her mother suffering like this, now helps her mother to throw out rubbish to lighten her burden."
Lashing out at his probusiness colleagues, the lawmaker who still protests regularly in the streets shouted: ''Haven't you said you will listen to the people and work for them? What have you done? You have hung a noose around their necks to hang them!"
But the minimum wage plan met opposition in the legislature.
''You do not know how fragile our competitiveness is . . . our salaries are very high compared to elsewhere. Our rents are a lot higher than elsewhere," said Tommy Cheung of the probusiness Liberal Party, which has 10 seats in the chamber. ''If you still want to set minimum wages, you will threaten our businesses and the jobs of our workers," he said.
The second motion, also defeated, called for more welfare for the elderly and the disabled.