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http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/20...ed-singapore-a-wsj-investigation/?mod=WSJBlog
By Chun Han Wong
This story of a strike by Chinese bus drivers in Singapore offers a close-up look at a major issue facing the Southeast Asian city-state today: The growing number of migrant workers who underpin Singapore’s economy and the social tensions that their presence can generate.
What happened over two days in late November 2012 rattled the foundations of Singapore’s economic success – its business-friendly governance and industrial harmony – and prompted a robust response from the government.
The strike, a rarity in Singapore, resonated across Asia, where other countries are grappling with a growing dependence on foreign labor, too. And it provided a window into ordinary lives seldom-seen: the migrants who fan out from China in search of a fatter paycheck abroad.
How to balance the need for new workers from overseas with the preservation of established ways, presents a major dilemma that policymakers and citizens will wrestle with for years to come.
Chapter One: Contours of Conflict
SINGAPORE—In the cool hours before dawn one Monday in November, this metropolis was at its calmest, its sleek skyscrapers and tree-lined thoroughfares drained of their daytime bustle.
Most of Singapore’s 5.3 million residents were still asleep. But there were signs of life at a cluster of austere housing blocks in the city-state’s northern suburbs, in a district called Woodlands. It was 3 a.m.
In cramped dormitories, Chinese bus drivers donned maroon shirts and black pants – the uniforms of employees of SMRT Corp.S53.SG -0.73%, a state-owned public-transport operator.
Then the drivers gathered in clusters near the dormitory gates. Shuttle buses waited to ferry them to bus terminals dotting the island, part of the dreary pre-dawn drill that ensures Singapore’s commuters arrive punctually at work every day.
As the buses idled, the drivers chatted in their native Mandarin. But that morning, the talk was different from their usual early-morning banter.
AFP/Getty Images
He Junling said he came across an online advertisement that was part of the SMRT hiring drive in early 2011. He is pictured here on Feb. 25.
He Junling, a 32-year-old mainland Chinese driver, and others walked through the group, spreading the message that the drivers should refuse to work that day and the next, according to Mr. He and others.
Slimly built with short cropped black hair, Mr. He has a calm, unassuming demeanor. But after one-and-a-half years at SMRT, his sense of grievance had reached boiling point.
The day before, in an essay addressed to his Chinese co-workers published on an online forum, he had laid out his case for why the drivers should not go to work. Compared with drivers from Singapore and neighboring Malaysia, drivers from the Chinese mainland felt they were being discriminated against by the transport company.
“We’re all human, yet SMRT management treats us so differently,” Mr. He wrote, using an alias that was known to his Chinese colleagues. “Clearly, they think there’s so many mainland Chinese available that they could hire hundreds at a go and fire anyone who steps out of line.”
That morning, as he worked the crowd, Mr. He reinforced his message with an appeal to the drivers’ patriotism and sense of injustice, tapping what the drivers say is a reservoir of frustration accumulated over several years over issues such as pay and living conditions.
A total of 171 Chinese drivers – the majority of them from the Woodlands-district dormitory – complied with his plan. It called for drivers to take medical leave en masse to miss work, according to SMRT public statements and prosecutors’ documents later filed in court in a related case. The shuttle buses departed empty.
Soon company supervisors showed up to try to persuade the men to work. They refused to budge and demanded to see the chief executive, according to the drivers.
Officials at SMRT, which serves 25% of Singapore’s bus ridership, declined to comment on the essay written by Mr. He. They would later acknowledge certain shortcomings and take steps to address them. But they say the company didn’t discriminate against its mainland Chinese drivers and called the workers’ actions inappropriate.
The Chinese drivers’ act of defiance would have been insignificant almost anywhere else. But in Singapore, a labor protest is a high-stakes game.
For this tightly controlled city-state, famous for its ban even on the sale of chewing gum, the drivers’ actions threatened one of its most cherished assets: A long record of maintaining unflinching public order and efficiency.
Over the past 50 years, that reputation has been a magnet for companies and investors across the globe, turning Singapore into one of the world’s richest places – a manicured island of skyscrapers, eight-lane highways, luxury cars and fancy restaurants.
The bus drivers, too, had plenty on the line. Each had spent a small fortune and traveled thousands of miles for a chance to make a better living. Many were the sole breadwinners in their families. In Singapore, they became unlikely activists, but not ineffective ones.
The dramatic events they set in motion would cause upheaval at one of Singapore’s most prominent companies, leading it to review and revise its practices, and prompt intense public scrutiny of the country’s way of dealing with employment disputes.
The strike would also spur some changes that may make life better for the migrants who come in the future. Yet, for some of the drivers who refused to board the buses that November morning, those changes would come at a high price.
Singapore hadn’t seen anything like it in years.
By Chun Han Wong
This story of a strike by Chinese bus drivers in Singapore offers a close-up look at a major issue facing the Southeast Asian city-state today: The growing number of migrant workers who underpin Singapore’s economy and the social tensions that their presence can generate.
What happened over two days in late November 2012 rattled the foundations of Singapore’s economic success – its business-friendly governance and industrial harmony – and prompted a robust response from the government.
The strike, a rarity in Singapore, resonated across Asia, where other countries are grappling with a growing dependence on foreign labor, too. And it provided a window into ordinary lives seldom-seen: the migrants who fan out from China in search of a fatter paycheck abroad.
How to balance the need for new workers from overseas with the preservation of established ways, presents a major dilemma that policymakers and citizens will wrestle with for years to come.
Chapter One: Contours of Conflict
SINGAPORE—In the cool hours before dawn one Monday in November, this metropolis was at its calmest, its sleek skyscrapers and tree-lined thoroughfares drained of their daytime bustle.
Most of Singapore’s 5.3 million residents were still asleep. But there were signs of life at a cluster of austere housing blocks in the city-state’s northern suburbs, in a district called Woodlands. It was 3 a.m.
In cramped dormitories, Chinese bus drivers donned maroon shirts and black pants – the uniforms of employees of SMRT Corp.S53.SG -0.73%, a state-owned public-transport operator.
Then the drivers gathered in clusters near the dormitory gates. Shuttle buses waited to ferry them to bus terminals dotting the island, part of the dreary pre-dawn drill that ensures Singapore’s commuters arrive punctually at work every day.
As the buses idled, the drivers chatted in their native Mandarin. But that morning, the talk was different from their usual early-morning banter.
AFP/Getty Images
He Junling said he came across an online advertisement that was part of the SMRT hiring drive in early 2011. He is pictured here on Feb. 25.
He Junling, a 32-year-old mainland Chinese driver, and others walked through the group, spreading the message that the drivers should refuse to work that day and the next, according to Mr. He and others.
Slimly built with short cropped black hair, Mr. He has a calm, unassuming demeanor. But after one-and-a-half years at SMRT, his sense of grievance had reached boiling point.
The day before, in an essay addressed to his Chinese co-workers published on an online forum, he had laid out his case for why the drivers should not go to work. Compared with drivers from Singapore and neighboring Malaysia, drivers from the Chinese mainland felt they were being discriminated against by the transport company.
“We’re all human, yet SMRT management treats us so differently,” Mr. He wrote, using an alias that was known to his Chinese colleagues. “Clearly, they think there’s so many mainland Chinese available that they could hire hundreds at a go and fire anyone who steps out of line.”
That morning, as he worked the crowd, Mr. He reinforced his message with an appeal to the drivers’ patriotism and sense of injustice, tapping what the drivers say is a reservoir of frustration accumulated over several years over issues such as pay and living conditions.
A total of 171 Chinese drivers – the majority of them from the Woodlands-district dormitory – complied with his plan. It called for drivers to take medical leave en masse to miss work, according to SMRT public statements and prosecutors’ documents later filed in court in a related case. The shuttle buses departed empty.
Soon company supervisors showed up to try to persuade the men to work. They refused to budge and demanded to see the chief executive, according to the drivers.
Officials at SMRT, which serves 25% of Singapore’s bus ridership, declined to comment on the essay written by Mr. He. They would later acknowledge certain shortcomings and take steps to address them. But they say the company didn’t discriminate against its mainland Chinese drivers and called the workers’ actions inappropriate.
The Chinese drivers’ act of defiance would have been insignificant almost anywhere else. But in Singapore, a labor protest is a high-stakes game.
For this tightly controlled city-state, famous for its ban even on the sale of chewing gum, the drivers’ actions threatened one of its most cherished assets: A long record of maintaining unflinching public order and efficiency.
Over the past 50 years, that reputation has been a magnet for companies and investors across the globe, turning Singapore into one of the world’s richest places – a manicured island of skyscrapers, eight-lane highways, luxury cars and fancy restaurants.
The bus drivers, too, had plenty on the line. Each had spent a small fortune and traveled thousands of miles for a chance to make a better living. Many were the sole breadwinners in their families. In Singapore, they became unlikely activists, but not ineffective ones.
The dramatic events they set in motion would cause upheaval at one of Singapore’s most prominent companies, leading it to review and revise its practices, and prompt intense public scrutiny of the country’s way of dealing with employment disputes.
The strike would also spur some changes that may make life better for the migrants who come in the future. Yet, for some of the drivers who refused to board the buses that November morning, those changes would come at a high price.
Singapore hadn’t seen anything like it in years.
