Jobless Singaporeans thumb noses at menial work

Saturday July 18, 2009
Jobless Singaporeans thumb noses at menial work
INSIGHT DOWN SOUTHBy SEAH CHIANG NEE

Employers in the service industry are struggling to hire locals, leading to an unhealthy dependence on foreigners.
MANY Singaporeans – like manager Joyce Ng – may be forgiven for asking: “Where is the job crisis? Is the recession for real?”
Despite the recession and a large loss of jobs, Ng, who runs The Whisky Store, was having anything but an easy time when she tried last month to hire local workers.
She posted six advertisements and finally got two responses. Both respondents, however, quit after a trial period.
Her complaint is shared by other employers who say that the Singaporean service worker is becoming a disappearing breed despite the downturn.
Singaporeans, including the newly-retrenched, appear reluctant to take up many types of service work, especially in eating places, shops and public transport, yet these are places that seem to be showing some signs of life despite the downturn.
Why are unemployed Singaporeans staying away from service jobs? In the United States, engineers have worked as hamburger flippers – but not here!
Singapore has produced a new highly-educated generation with high expectations, so jobs perceived as “lowly” get ignored. It is a national problem. The shortage affects every consumer in Singapore.
Significantly raising wages may attract local workers, but it will lead to higher prices for consumers. It is driving Singapore to become more dependent on foreign workers, who already make up a third of its work force and population.
In the latest case, hundreds of cooked food stalls, a major source of cheap meals, petitioned the Government to allow them to hire more workers from overseas.
Many of these low-margin – but socially important – operations have been forced to close because they couldn’t find locals to cook, wash and serve customers.
“Each closure deals a blow to lower-middle class workers and students who frequent these food stalls on a daily basis,” a Chinese newspaper reporter said.
Employers would rather have cheaper, harder-working nationals from China, India, Myanmar and the Philippines, but for a government permit quota restriction. Last month the authorities significantly loosened it for the service sector, which makes up 65% of the economy.
Employers can now hire five foreign workers for every five locals employed, up from the three-to-seven ratio. This change is merely following the reality on the ground. For many months now, so many foreigners have been seen in public places that even a one-for-one rule appears irrelevant.
As an example, of the 136,500 service jobs created last year, more than half – or 54% – went to foreigners.
Served By Foreigners
Today, Singapore is served by foreign nationals more than they are by their own people. If these workers pull out, life here will come to a complete standstill.
They work as waiters, salesmen, cooks, nurses, bus drivers, and take up a wide range of white-collar service jobs. They hail from some 20 countries all over the world, led by Malaysia and China.
The relaxation may have been timed to come just ahead of the scheduled launch early next year of the two big casino resorts – Sands at Marina Bay and Resorts World at Sentosa. Both need tens of thousands of workers – more than Singapore can produce on its own. So the bulk may come from abroad.
Some say the greenlight to allow one foreign worker for every Singaporean in the service industry will have a big impact on the demography, and even redirect its history.
The reason is that they account for a massive 68% of Singapore’s total work force. The majority are here on contract and may leave after a few years, but the unending cycle itself will leave a permanent mark on the city.
It was a different scenario a generation ago when large multinationals were flocking in to open up factories to manufacture products for export.
I remember how shocked I was at being told that for my country to survive, we needed a massive inflow of foreign workers because our citizens could fill only one of every seven vacancies generated.
The official mindset towards the issue, too, has changed. The political leadership under Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Keng Swee was a lot more wary about having too many foreigners. Their first concern was not its social impact, but the nation’s stability and security.
In several briefings, we were cautioned that having too many foreigners working in our midst could expose this tiny island to possible foreign manipulation – or even control. The use of foreign workers to organise strikes and street violence could become a weapon by a foreign power to blackmail Singapore.
In one briefing, editors were also told that Singapore would avoid Europe’s “addiction” to cheap labour from Asia and Africa. Look at the street violence they imported from home to the streets of Paris and other cities, I was told.
To prevent this, Singapore opted to automate operations to stem the high manpower consumption, and move some factories to Batam and other places.
But these days, under the shadow of an economic crisis, such talk has all but disappeared. We seem to be moving in the opposite direction.