” SMRT is 54 per cent owned by state investment firm Temasek Holdings. Singapore has been hiring bus drivers from China and Malaysia because of a chronic shortage of manpower.”
Why shortage of manpower? Shortage is created in the first place by PAP’s flawed policy of pushing for economic growth using cheap labor. With PAP blessings, employers have exploited the policy for lower costs and higher profits – by liberally importing cheap labor. In this instance, government-controlled SMRT is taking the lead – true to PAP policy.
Instead of depending on imported labor, if they were willing to pay decent wages for local workers, no labor shortage would have arisen. Locals would not decline the jobs. The fact that many locals opt to drive taxis (which yields a decent income) is proof that it’s all matter of income – first-world income for first-world quality of life in a first-world country, which PAP claims Singapore to be.
PAP never fails to remind us that growth is essential for our economic survival. If it is a question of OUR SURVIVAL, shouldn’t we be creating growth and jobs for OUR PEOPLE? Why are we creating jobs for FOREIGNERS? Not only that. Because 3 million+ foreigners have flooded our shores (and the labor market) over the last decade, many of them have even robbed locals’ jobs by their cheapness.
The PAP government should take a hard look and draw a lesson from the PRC bus drivers’ unprecedented industrial action, which I believe is due the practice of cheap labor. If they just look at it with the usually-punitive mind as a violation of a labor law, they would be missing the trees for woods. More importantly, they should delve into the fundamental cause. To my mind, PAP’s cheap labor policy is the root cause, coupled with the employers’ madness for cheap labor.
The drivers (Malaysians and PRCs) were employed because they were cheap – not because of manpower shortage, which is created by cheap labor in the first place. Imported workers initially feel contented, but over time, living in high-cost Singapore, they naturally want more in wages. SMRT gave the drivers a raise, but with a mentality for cheapness hard at work. They gave the Malaysian drivers $275 raise plus bonus. With the PRCs, however, SMRT thought they could get away cheap with only $75 raise and no bonus. They were proven wrong!
The corporate cheap-labor mentality and practice at SMRT has boomeranged with industrial action. At national level, unless the PAP government wake up soon to their idiocy, the evils of their cheap-labor-for-growth policy will haunt them in 4 years’ time.
- http://www.tremeritus.com/2012/11/29/root-cause-of-prc-drivers-unprecedented-industrial-action/
