http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/10/13/govt-must-impose-tough-penalties-against-la-fondue/
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Govt must impose tough penalties against La Fondue[/h]
		
		
	
	
 
 October 13th, 2013 | 
 Author: 
Contributions 
On Friday, 11 October 2013, unemployment support group 
Transitionings.Org leader Gilbert Goh announced that he had called for a 
nationwide boycott of Swiss restaurant La Fondue located at Dempsey Hill, due to 
its discriminatory recruitment practices. The reason stated for the boycott was 
because the restaurant had placed an ad for a chef where it was stated that the 
restaurant was “currently an all-Filipino working environment” and that the job 
vacancy was “only for Filipinos”.
The saga began when a sharp-eyed netizen had spotted the ad and linked it to 
Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan Jin’s Facebook wall. While the ad did not 
name the restaurant, it did give its address as “25 Dempsey Road”. Another 
netizen checked out the address and found that the only restaurant that fit the 
description was La Fondue. A third netizen then delivered a warning to the 
restaurant via its Facebook page that he would be calling for a boycott of the 
establishment for its discriminatory hiring practices. While the company’s 
Facebook administrator deleted his warning soon after, by then it had already 
caught the attention of Mr. Goh who announced that Transitionings.Org would be 
organizing an indefinite nation-wide boycott against the restaurant in protest 
against the ad. He also sent an email to TAFEP and Mr Tan notifying them of the 
restaurant’s discriminatory recruitment ad.
On the morning of Saturday, 12 October 2013, Mr. Ravinder Pal, the CEO of the 
restaurant issued an apology for the ad. In his statement, he said that a staff 
member who “was not authorized to issue recruitment ads” and who was “acting on 
his own” issued the ad “without the knowledge or consent of the company”. He 
added that the company’s recruitment policies were carried out “in accordance 
with the country’s laws” and said that the particular staff member “would be 
severely dealt with”.
However, the same sharp-eyed netizen who originally spotted and reported the 
offending ad had done some digging around and discovered that the restaurant had 
previously issued an ad for a restaurant manager that stated that the post was 
“only for female Filipinos”. The same person, a Mr. Roginald Santos Oloresisimo, 
who was originally from the Filipino province of Taguig, had issued both ads. 
Because of Mr Pal’s highly unconvincing explanation, Mr. Goh announced that he 
had written in for further clarification and that the boycott would continue 
until further notice.
A closer look at Mr. Pal’s apology and explanation would immediately raise 
several questions. While the announcement did not name Mr. Oloresisimo, it did 
confirm that he was a member of their staff, which raises the question: what is 
his position there then? If he was “was not authorized to issue recruitment ads” 
and was “acting on his own” as declared, then why did he issued at least two 
separate recruitment ads, one for the chef and one for the restaurant manager? 
If he had really issued the ads “without the knowledge or consent of the 
company” as declared, then who is paying the salaries of the staff he recruited? 
Surely at least both the company’s HR and General Managers must be aware of this 
since both their signatures will be required to issue the new staffs’ paychecks. 
And if the Payroll Department is separate from the HR Department as practiced by 
some companies, then at least 3 separate managers must be aware of this wouldn’t 
it? Whatever the case may be, it also raises serious questions over how Mr Pal 
himself is managing the company since the obvious inference that one would draw 
from it is that he is entirely clueless about what his management team has been 
doing all this while. So one is forced to conclude that he is either incompetent 
whose management team had been jerking him around without his knowledge or that 
his explanation is untrue.
Whatever the truth about the management of La Fondue really is, there is no 
denying that this case is a true test for MoM and its agency TAFEP, the 
government’s much vaunted tripartism policy is dealing with labor relations and 
even its immigration and social integration policies. If La Fondue truly has 
been recruiting only Filipinos as the two ads in question proudly declare, then 
it is very clear that the management has been practicing xenophobic racial 
discrimination against non-Filipinos. Obviously this also means that they seek 
only to commune with their own kind and have absolutely no desire to integrate 
with locals.
In view of the government’s continuous exhortation for locals to integrate 
with the immigrants, itself a farcical idea since it is the foreigners who 
should integrate with the locals and their continuous criticisms of anybody who 
objects to the perceived favorable treatment for them as xenophobic, failure to 
come down hard on La Fondue would be seen as the government caving in to 
xenophobic racist foreigners. It would also demonstrate to the people that TAFEP 
and MoM are entirely toothless and that the government itself is not serious or 
may even be entirely helpless about dealing with errant employers who 
discriminate against locals, which would be a clear-cut failure of tripartism. 
If the government fails to impose tough penalties against La Fondue, then the 
people’s fast crumbling trust in the government will only be further eroded.
Maybe eroded badly enough for PM Lee to have his wish to retire from public 
office before the age of 70 come true in 2016…
 
Darth Vader
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