Lee Hsien Loong: Wages in manufacturing sector growing faster than national average

[makapaaa]

http://wikitemasek.org/lee-hsien-lo...-sector-growing-faster-than-national-average/ Lee Hsien Loong: Wages in manufacturing sector growing faster than national average

---

At the Singapore Manufacturers’ Federation’s 80th anniversary dinner on Saturday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong repeated his usual calls for productivity and boasted about Singapore’s tripartism calling it “unique”. What Prime Minister Lee doesn’t know, that tripartism is not a new system coined by the PAP. Tripartism traced its roots back to the rise of fascism in the 1930s, but in Singapore, “forced tripartism” is more appropriate as the PAP government control workers through banning of private unions and the use of Internal Security Act to detain workers on strikes indefinitely.
In the his speech to the dinner largely attended by MNCs CEOs and manufacturing business employers, the pro-business Prime Minister painted a picture too rosy for workers in the manufacturing sector:

“He said manufacturing provides good, skilled jobs to Singa­poreans, with average local wages in the sector growing faster than the national average for a number of years.”
~Lee Hsien Loong, ChannelNewsAsia 29 Sep 2012 [Source]
​

However according to the recent report on wages by the Ministry of Manpower, wages in the manufacturing sector falls under the “Below-Average Total and Basic Wages”:

“All industries gave wage increases to their employees in 2011
(Appendix-Table 1). Financial & insurance services employees had the largest total
wage increase (9.1%), while transportation & storage…were also in the lead. In contrast, administrative & support
services (total: 3.7%; basic: 3.5%), manufacturing (total: 4.1%; basic: 4.0%),
construction (total: 4.2%; basic: 3.9%) and accommodation & food services (total: 4.5%;
basic: 3.8%) had among the lowest total and basic wage increases.”
~Report on Wages in Singapore by Ministry of Manpower [Source]
​

Nevertheless, Singapore could still survive with an incompetent Prime Minister but this also reflect how badly the brain drain in the ruling PAP has turned out with a leader shooting his mouth off in the presence of rich foreign investors.

 

[yaosiu]

Re: Lee Hsien Loong: Wages in manufacturing sector growing faster than national avera

I dun really think young singaporeans aspire to be iphone assemblers for the rest of their lives.

 

[winnipegjets]

Re: Lee Hsien Loong: Wages in manufacturing sector growing faster than national avera

That the justification for the PAP to bring in more foreigners ...add another million to keep labour cost down. It is a losing battle that the PAP is fighting. A developed country will have higher labour cost. But life can good despite higher labour cost ...look at Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland ....stop looking at the US model of development.

 

[Fook Seng]

If you have a strong manufacturing base consisting of mainly foreign labour, except for tax money, what other benefits are there?

On the other side of the equation, there is the social cost related to an increase in congestion to our infrastructure and competition in demand for housing, medical facilities, schools etc.

Ironically when the Govt try to raise the maid's levy some years' back, the social cost was put up as a case to limit the growth of foreign domestic help. But this is one category of foreign labour that could help us lessen the burden of managing more children in the family, a key objective on the national agenda.