Throughout October, as the seventh legislative term wound down, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s Legislative Council witnessed pertinent and persistent scrutiny of the city’s labor-market situation as lawmaker after lawmaker raised incisive questions that elicited detailed insights and specific revelations.

With unemployment rising, the minimum wage segment affected by significant small and medium-sized enterprise closures, the construction sector bogged down by climbing joblessness and wage suppression, and terminations attributed to labor importation, work conditions and workers’ rights have been firmly in focus despite Hong Kong’s economy growing 3.1 percent year-on-year in the second quarter. Elected representatives appeared to have an ear to the ground, formulating queries and seeking clarifications in a manner that amplified both respect for and a responsibility to their constituencies. This not only helped bring to the fore the policy fine print governing crucial livelihood issues but also gave the executive branch an opportunity to share relevant data and spell out policy imperatives.

For example, in response to Michael Luk Chung-hung’s questions on Oct 8, it was revealed in LegCo that the number of cases related to wage disputes handled by the Labour Department (LD) involving more than 20 employees rose from 41 in 2022 to 66 in 2024, centered almost entirely on the construction sector.

It was also revealed that similar claims involving 20 or fewer employees rose from 3,552 in 2022 to 5,338 in 2024. Once again, the highest number of claims stemmed from the construction industry — from 1,307 in 2022 to 2,047 in 2024. The accommodation and food-service industry saw an uptick to 959 such cases in 2024 from 606 in 2022.

Days later, the latest data released indicated that the unemployment rate had edged up — from 3.7 percent in June-August, to 3.9 percent in July-September, with construction and the food and beverage sector hit the hardest — at 7.2 percent and 6.8 percent respectively.

With the city gearing up to hold the new term LegCo elections on Dec 7, the public gaze will be firmly fixed on the candidates. As Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu pointed out on Oct 28, “It will be a fierce competition, and candidates will have to compete by their election platforms, capabilities and performances, but it will be a healthy competition

Lawmakers were primarily seeking to assess the “impact of labor importation policy on local workers’ employment opportunities and labor rights”. The rising wage dispute is but another mirror to long-standing local workers’ concerns.

On Oct 15, in response to Lawrence Tang Fei’s question, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han revealed that as of Sept 30, the Labour Department had received 321 complaints across sectors this year, alleging that employers had displaced serving local employees with imported workers. There were 19 such complaints made last year. A week later, responses to Chau Siu-chung’s question shed light on the food and beverage sector, from which 225 such complaints had originated this year, as of Sept 30. Eighty-five complaints from this sector pertained to employers failing to meet the manning ratio requirement. In fact, during the said period, the LD received 446 complaints from the F&B sector in all. Earlier, LegCo heard that 869 illegal workers were arrested from January through August this year.

Also on Oct 8, responding to Frankie Ngan Man-yu, the secretary for labour and welfare replied that as of the end of August, Hong Kong had 35,000 imported workers, comprising 1 percent of the city’s workforce. As widely reported, the figure turned out to be a little higher. Responses to Chau’s question at LegCo on Oct 22 revealed that 35,589 imported workers had been approved for the F&B sector from Sept 4, 2023, through Sept 30, 2025, as part of a specific labor program, while 2,102 had been approved for the accommodation-services industry. This helped provide a snapshot of the local labor situation vis-a-vis imported workers.

Interestingly, also on Oct 22, in a written reply to Adrian Ho King-hong, Undersecretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Joseph Chan Ho-lim revealed that the median monthly employment earnings of construction workers had shrunk from HK$23,500 ($3,022) in the first quarter of 2025 to HK$23,000 in the second. The corresponding figures for accommodation and food service personnel have remained stagnant at HK$17,000 since the fourth quarter of 2024. For perspective, Hong Kong employees earned a median monthly income of HK$22,300 in the second quarter of 2025, while median household income was at HK$30,000.

The questions posed by a number of lawmakers and the responses elicited helped construct a fact-based picture of a hot-button issue. The main functions of LegCo, as stipulated under Article 73 of the Basic Law, include enacting laws, approving public expenditures, and monitoring the work of the executive branch of the government. In responsibly exercising their remit, especially when it comes to monitoring the work of the executive, lawmakers send out a crucial signal — that they value the electorate, respect the community, and honor the system of checks and balances that contributes toward healthy and successful executive-legislative relations. Indeed, during its four-year session, LegCo passed 130 bills — a 60 percent increase from the previous term. LegCo President Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen asserted after the seventh-term LegCo’s final meeting on Oct 22 that Hong Kong’s legislature will not become a “rubber stamp” as critics claim under the executive-led system.

With the city gearing up to hold the new term LegCo elections on Dec 7, the public gaze will be firmly fixed on the candidates. As Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu pointed out on Oct 28, “It will be a fierce competition, and candidates will have to compete by their election platforms, capabilities and performances, but it will be a healthy competition.”

“Healthy” is a function of the right spirit for public service, of personal humility and integrity and profound regard for the common good. “Healthy” is the operative word.

The author is an award-winning English-language fiction writer and current-affairs commentator.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.