While previous strikes have tended to peter out in the face of Hong Kong's laissez-faire government, corporate muscle and elastic labour market, this one has maintained its potency, partly because of the specialist skills and the number of workers involved.

'It's the largest and longest strike since the handover,' said unionist legislator Lee Cheuk Yan, referring to Hong Kong's handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

Gathered outside a construction site in an old, scruffy district in east Kowloon - far from Hong Kong's luxury malls and corporate skyscrapers - several hundred metal workers vowed to keep fighting for higher wages and shorter working hours in a mass sit-in protest begun a fortnight ago.

'Over the past 10 years, my wages have almost halved to HK$600 (S$120) a day,' said Mr Ho Man Wong, 53, who has been a bar-bender for 30 years.

The strike entered its 13th day yesterday with around 150 workers outside a construction site. They have turned down the most recent offer from their employers of HK$850 per day, and are demanding HK$950, South China Morning Post reported.

The workers said they failed to reap the benefits of a booming economy as their employers were reluctant to revise their wages, which were cut during the economic recession a few years ago.

Mr Lee, whose union helped organise a rally on Sunday which drew 1,500 people, said much more needed to be done to protect the rights of low-income labourers, given a growing wealth gap and inherent poverty festering beneath the city's affluent image.

'It very much reflects that workers in these 10 years have been heavily exploited...There is this anger that they're not able to share in the prosperity of society,' he said.

Experts in bar-bending - the task of shaping and laying the 'metal skeletons' of new buildings, including their foundations - the workers say they have managed to ground more than 20 building projects. One property tycoon conceded that the strikes were having a serious effect.

REUTERS