Home > Speaker's Corner

Growing Old in Sg

dragg
22 Mar 07, 08:39

Originally posted by fymk:
Get real. I was not rich when I arrived in Australia - just a few thousand dollars in the bank.

You need skills or money.

Get real. Retrenching your older Singaporeans in favor of cheaper labor ( and most probably the "foreign talents") because they are paid more is not a good reason. Go look at the Qantas' issue with SIA engineering in Singapore.

Loose screws and bolts left in a part of a Qantas aircraft was one of the problems listed . No wonder SIA dropped a nut bolt on a Sydney's residence.

Most likely, a great negative result of the silly foreign talent policy and the silly policy of keeping wages low in favor of discriminating against older workers with valuable experience.

globalisation is just an excuse. the govt should try its best to protect the locals and not adopt a solution that works against the welfare of its citizens.

as someone said, australia are doing it. always employ locals first. justify if employment is offered to a foreigner.
oxford mushroom
22 Mar 07, 15:33

Originally posted by fymk:
Get real. I was not rich when I arrived in Australia - just a few thousand dollars in the bank.

You need skills or money.

Get real. Retrenching your older Singaporeans in favor of cheaper labor ( and most probably the "foreign talents") because they are paid more is not a good reason. Go look at the Qantas' issue with SIA engineering in Singapore.

Loose screws and bolts left in a part of a Qantas aircraft was one of the problems listed . No wonder SIA dropped a nut bolt on a Sydney's residence.

Most likely, a great negative result of the silly foreign talent policy and the silly policy of keeping wages low in favor of discriminating against older workers with valuable experience.

Businesses should employ the best person for the job, irregardless of nationality. Positive discrimination policies protect inefficient, poorly skilled local workers from competition and will eventually lead to the entire business losing out to foreign competition.

The foreign talent policy is right. If filipino nurses can do the job as well as Singaporean nurses for less pay, they get the job, as they do even here in the UK.

If experienced older workers are worth their salaries, they will retain their jobs for the same reason senior consultants in the hospitals can continue to work long past their 60th birthday (one professor in NUS has passed his 80th birthday).
fymk
22 Mar 07, 15:39

Originally posted by oxford mushroom:
Businesses should employ the best person for the job, irregardless of nationality. Positive discrimination policies protect inefficient, poorly skilled local workers from competition and will eventually lead to the entire business losing out to foreign competition.

The foreign talent policy is right. If filipino nurses can do the job as well as Singaporean nurses for less pay, they get the job, as they do even here in the UK.

If experienced older workers are worth their salaries, they will retain their jobs for the same reason senior consultants in the hospitals can continue to work long past their 60th birthday (one professor in NUS has passed his 80th birthday).
You will get zero loyalty from your older workers with the experience then . A price too high to pay especially when SIA learnt a huge lesson.

You are living in a dream world of Singapore . The Singaporean government does not care about experienced workers - it's just the money to them - a million dollar per year salary supported, as long as they get their pay - they don't give a damn.

We are not talking about incompetence here - the government continues to generate propaganda about lowering expectations of jobs and people not wanting to do them. Don't talk to me - I know people who ran off elsewhere with invitations because they know what is coming to them if they stay in Singapore after they hit a certain retrenchable age.

As far as I see it, Singapore will leak talent. With zero loyalty from your worker and plenty of your so called cheaper foreign talents , don't expect a high quality of work done - expect the standard of work to be just acceptable and in the eyes of the Australian public who values Qantas proudly - NOT acceptable .

Yesterday I felt so ashamed from that damning news report, not only for Singapore but my countrymen . Singapore is known for being high tech and now its workmanship will be known as substandard. Remember how people used to make fun of made in taiwan ....I can see how people will start to make fun of made in Singapore .

Other countries do it for the quality which in turns generate the money and help the national economy . I remember how SIA retrench their workers and then find out that they have to contract them back. What a big joke.
oxford mushroom
22 Mar 07, 15:44

Originally posted by fymk:
You will get zero loyalty from your older workers with the experience then . A price too high to pay especially when SIA learnt a huge lesson.

You are living in a dream world of Singapore . The Singaporean government does not care about experienced workers - it's just the money to them - a million dollar per year salary supported, as long as they get their pay - they don't give a damn.

Other countries do it for the quality which in turns generate the money and help the national economy . I remember how SIA retrench their workers and then find out that they have to contract them back. What a big joke.
Employers are not daft. If it is more economical to pay higher wages for experienced workers, they will keep them. On the other hand, what's the use of an old IT specialist who may be an expert in COBOL and FORTRAN when the industry no longer has demand of these programming languages?

Experience does not always matter in all industries. At the end of the day, what matters is that you have the worker who is able to deliver the most productivity at the lowest cost. Quality certainly matters, but so does cost. It is the cost-benefit ratio that employers look at.
fymk
22 Mar 07, 15:55

Originally posted by oxford mushroom:
Employers are not daft. If it is more economical to pay higher wages for experienced workers, they will keep them. On the other hand, what's the use of an old IT specialist who may be an expert in COBOL and FORTRAN when the industry no longer has demand of these programming languages?

Experience does not always matter in all industries. At the end of the day, what matters is that you have the worker who is able to deliver the most productivity at the lowest cost. Quality certainly matters, but so does cost. It is the cost-benefit ratio that employers look at.
You conveniently pull out old IT specialists - now I have a family friend who is an old IT specialist - they don't just stand there and hope the world sticks with the version 1.0 of DOS . They have to upgrade all the time.

She is working for an american company - head hunted by them . If she worked in Singapore like her other friends - she will be retrenched by now because she costs "too much".

Don't talk to me about most productivity at the lowest cost. Some of the old SIA engineers and technicians got headhunted by Emirates.

The Singaporean government wishes to encourage intake of cheaper foreign talents to push wages down for locals. Fine , it is their perogative . If you want to treat local workers like dirt , don't complain about them leaving the country and most of all don't ask them to come back to work for the country .

My parents got the call requesting me to come back to Singapore - " how about asking her to come back and serve the country" ....after how one of their hospitals treated me like dirt . I was thinking of fellow Singaporeans in the SARs period. Then I realised that if I died serving Singapore, the government in Singapore will not even take care of my parents. FUcK that! One miserable medal for a life lost? What even happened to that fund they set up?

At least in Australia, if I died in the course of duty helping Australia , my parents will be surviving quite comfortably on all the pay outs they get from my death including from the government if they were dependent on me.

Oh and what the WHO consultant said about the communicable disease system in Singapore was really sad during SARS: Great technology but no one used it practically. That is what we get for paying for a million per annum ministers and foreign talents. Great technology with no practical use .