Letters | How Hong Kong’s ‘slashie’ culture also brings problems for gig workers
- Life outside the conventional career path offers opportunities and freedom to young people, but it also brings issues of job stability, security and labour rights
“Slashie” is a term which, in Hong Kong, describes young people who simultaneously take up several jobs. These young people reject the conventional approach of specialising in one job or a particular field, instead choosing a more diversified life with multiple jobs and identities.
This phenomenon is part of a new pattern of flexible employment. Nowadays, many young people add slashes between their different professions in their resumes or their profiles across online media platforms.
With the global job market becoming more competitive as the world trends towards a knowledge-based economy, slashies realise they need to develop multiple skills instead of focusing on a single speciality. A person who works in the same position for many years will accumulate experience but also be restricted to a certain industry, missing out on diversified, all-round development.
As such, more young people are developing themselves by taking employment beyond their existing full-time jobs. This helps them unleash their potential, broaden their horizons and enhance their competitiveness.
There are fears that the kinds of experience these young people accumulate through such flexible employment will not be recognised or appreciated, squeezing their salaries and making it difficult to find full-time jobs again. Adopting such an unconventional approach could limit their career progression and keep them from improving their social mobility.
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Another concern is that some employers might not provide slashies with formal contracts since these young people often are not full-time employees. Instead, there are usually only verbal agreements between them which might only loosely mention working hours and compensation. Critically, the payment period and labour insurance also tend not to be clearly negotiated in advance.