S'pore's dirty secret
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apart from age discrimination, this issue of decreasing wages for the lowest wage earners is something our million dollar ministers perversely refuse to tackle!
Straits Times
S'pore's dirty secret
They keep offices, shopping centres and the roads clean. But their wages look shabby compared to the rest of boomtown Singapore. SUE-ANN CHIA finds out why the pay of cleaners and labourers declined over the past decade
EVERY DAY, Madam Aishah Mohamed Yunos, 30, toils at four blocks in a Bukit Panjang housing estate, wiping walls and lifts and sweeping and mopping floors.
The neighbourhood is spick and span. But the job pays crumbs.
At least that is what Madam Aishah feels when she pockets her monthly wages of $400. If that's not lousy enough, she has not had a pay rise in two years on the job.
'There's nothing else I can do,' she says with a careless shrug. She left school at Primary 6.
Her story, if she sticks to cleaning work, could soon mirror that of another cleaner's, Madam P. Devi, 60.
Nine years ago, she earned $500 a month cleaning offices. Today, she earns $440 cleaning at a mall in Holland Village.
'I have enough to eat,' she says, by way of prefacing how she has no right to be unhappy because she is illiterate. She and her retiree security guard husband, 69, who gets a pension, are supporting two children still in school.
The two women, across two generations, are in the beleaguered brigade of Singapore workers whose pay packets have slackened even as other workers have marched ahead in an expanding economy.
In the last 10 years, the starting salaries of all occupational groups rose - except one.
That group: cleaners and labourers. Their median monthly starting pay fell 30 per cent between 1996 and 2006 - from $860 to $600.
The Government's latest wage report says the group's median pay was being dragged down by a sizeable number of this category of workers languishing in extremely low-paying jobs.
At the bottom of the heap: office cleaners and aircraft loaders. They start with a monthly pay of $500 and $550 respectively.
In 1996, newbie cleaners made $550 while newbie aircraft loaders made $650.
While aircraft loaders' pay went up with experience, office cleaners had no such gains. Their median monthly salary fell from $708 in 1996 to $657 last year.
Twin forces thwarting rise in wages
WHAT accounts for their shrinking wages?
Labour economists blame two forces: competition from low-skilled foreign workers and the growing trend of outsourcing.
'Salaries are unlikely to rise as long as low-skilled local workers compete with low-skilled foreign labour who are often paid less,' says Associate Professor Hui Weng Tat, vice-dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
His view that foreign workers depress the wages of local workers has been aired before by others, including Mr Lim Swee Say when he was deputy labour chief.
In an interview last year, Mr Lim, who is now the labour chief, said he suspected the easy entry of cheap foreign workers in some sectors has reduced the incentive for employers to improve work processes and raise productivity. It is easier and cheaper to hire cheap, than to invest in better work processes.
But he made clear he was not opposed to foreign workers, saying that they contributed to the economy.
Economist Lim Chong Yah, who headed the National Wages Council for 29 years until 2001, also last year warned policymakers to be careful about allowing 'too free a flow' of 'very low value-added labour, very low-wage labour'.
The other issue to contend with is outsourcing. As firms cut costs and headcount, many outsource non-core functions like cleaning.
Instead of being on the more stable payroll of these companies, cleaners are now hired at a much lower pay by cleaning agencies which then assign them to different workplaces.
Cleaning agencies, in their fierce battle to win contracts, slash the price of their bids. The losers: the cleaners who end up with even lower pay.
Prof Hui notes that outsourcing also encourages service buyers such as building owners to switch to cheaper cleaning contracts. This means some cleaners may continue in the same job under a different employer - often wearing just differently coloured uniforms - while others are forced to seek new employment.
'This perpetuates the low pay of such workers who do not benefit from any seniority-based component in their pay but are constantly treated as new employees,' he says.
Part-timers, retirees depress wage figures
FIGURES from five cleaning companies surveyed by Insight indicate that cleaners' pay may be creeping up.
Five to 10 years ago, a cleaner would be offered around $580 to $600 a month. Today, he would get about $100 more, says Mr Kevin Loh, the boss of Campaign Cleaning Services. -
unsung heroes......
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DOn't you know....
the government is blinded by the Dollar Sign...
The next thing you will likely hear from those proPAPs is that these low wage earners REFUSE to upgrade themselves...
these cleaners should go study and become engineers, biomedical researchers and such.,.... -
unsung heroes? they are the exploited underclass!!Originally posted by FireIce:unsung heroes...... -
Well, we have to pay our ministers top wages to make sure that they don't get tempted to fall into corruption.
So, by that tack... we should pay our cleaners better wages to make sure that they won't get tempted to fall into sloppiness and tarnish Singapore's image as a clean and green city.
So... any comments on this? -
i almost thought that s'pore is filled with rubbish.
money corrupts everyone's mind -
Unsung and exploited heroes.Originally posted by lotus999:unsung heroes? they are the exploited underclass!! -
And the 'mini si ter' will say - 'they are lucky they still got a job'
Yah! Upgrade themselves by going back to school when their pay is hardly enough to feed themselves. Pray the cleaners don't fall sick else no extra money to even go TTS since hospital fees increase liao. 
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or become scientist or perhaps ministerOriginally posted by HyperFocal:DOn't you know....
the government is blinded by the Dollar Sign...
The next thing you will likely hear from those proPAPs is that these low wage earners REFUSE to upgrade themselves...
these cleaners should go study and become engineers, biomedical researchers and such.,.... 
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Oh yes, some minister would remind us that paying these cleaners and labourers more would erode their work ethics!
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Welcome to $ingapore
Everything in $ingapore is $$$ now
Morning we take $B$ and $MRT
Mobile we use $ingtel & $tarhub
Cable we use $tarhub & $ingtel Mio
Utilities we pay to $ingapore PUB
Buy anything we got to pay higher and higher G$T
Sick seriously go $GH, TT$H etc need more and more $$$
$chool fees, $chool text books also need $$$
Once again, welcome to $ingapore ..... -
cool . nice...
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if flash is a cleaner, he would be a suPER HEro. cleans 10,000 blocks in one dayOriginally posted by FireIce:unsung heroes...... -
i respect them la..
they help to take the dishes i will thank them.
jus a little help i can do -
The whole fault lies with you people. The problem can be solved if you ppl are willing to pay more for conservancy every month.
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Don't feed the resident troll.
There are a few societies where the locals are the cleaners, road sweepers and garbage disposal staff. Developed countries such as Japan, Switzerland and NZ employ locals and not the easy option of FT to perform what others term degrading jobs.
Unfortunately, not every country recognizes and respects this workscope, SG included. In such countries, those 'filling the need' in USA for example, are the hispanics, mexicans and asian immigrants - laundry cleaners, MacDonald's staff and your average toilet cleaners.
In France, the street cleaners are african immigrants, with a handful of local french.
In SG, FTs are the primary workforce employed in such jobs. Part of the reason is the enormous emphasis of profit margin by such companies as Semcorp and Semac, where keeping a lean wage cost is paramount to a high turnover.
Unfortunately, with the immense pressure to obtain a university cert, who will employed a degree-holder for this kind of work, let alone pay him a commensurate salary? Low pay, embarrassment and saving face are the primary reasons why people will shun this line, leaving the lower-educated to fill the gap, along with the FTs.
The day we become more affluent, slow down our fast-paced lives, and find more satisfaction in raising a family rather than being career driven money-mongers, will come the time SG becomes completely self-sufficient without the inherent dependency of FTs.
And this requires a drastic overhaul of our mindsets. -
I wonder if his name translated from spanish means bullsh|t?
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Originally posted by BillyBong:
And how much do they pay for conservancy? Are you willing to pay more?
[b]Don't feed the resident troll.
There are a few societies where the locals are the cleaners, road sweepers and garbage disposal staff. Developed countries such as Japan, Switzerland and NZ employ locals and not the easy option of FT to perform what others term degrading jobs. -
JAPAN: Foreign Workers Wanted, Must Bear XenophobiaOriginally posted by BillyBong:There are a few societies where the locals are the cleaners, road sweepers and garbage disposal staff. Developed countries such as Japan, Switzerland and NZ employ locals and not the easy option of FT to perform what others term degrading jobs.
By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Dec 15 (IPS) - Intrusive media reports on the case of a Peruvian worker, arrested a fortnight ago on suspicion of killing a seven-year-old girl, have exposed the vulnerability of foreign workers to Japan's famous xenophobia.
But, for once, activists and cross-cultural experts are stepping up pressure on the government to ease discriminatory policies against foreigners, especially poor migrant workers, and encourage better understanding of the problems newcomers face in Japanese society.
The 30-year-old Peruvian was in Japan on a three-year visa granted to people of proven Japanese descent. He worked in various auto-part factories that employ cheap foreign labour, till his arrest on Nov. 30.
Among the many human rights violations committed against the suspect were the public statements made by his court-appointed lawyers who told the media that he had confessed to the murder, point out activists.
Television crews fell over each other to enter and film his small apartment, even before his arrest, and interviews with the man's bewildered wife and family in Peru, carried out by Japanese reporters, were aired.
''I was shocked to see the way his lawyers treated the suspect they are supposed to defend. The lack of media restraint shows the lack of respect for the rights of foreigners," said Luis Albare, editor of International Press, a newspaper catering to the Spanish-speaking population in Japan. ''Many Peruvian workers living in Japan have been badly affected by the way the suspect was treated.''
Albare reported that Peruvians living in Japan have become the butt of cruel comments by their Japanese colleagues after the over-publicised arrest.
People freely hint that ‘Peruvians are all alike' and a Peruvian child in a Japanese public school talked of the mental pain and sadness she felt when the teacher in her class asked the students to name the nationality of the suspect.
Activists contend that the hysteria over the murder has fanned a deep undercurrent of distrust of foreigners who have been linked, by the police, to rising crime in the country.
Currently, Japan hosts around 800,000 foreign workers, Of them, 230,000 are of Japanese ancestry, mostly from Latin America where many Japanese migrated and settled in the early 20th century to escape poverty Peruvians account for about 60,000 of that number.
Police statements repeatedly indicate that crimes committed by foreign nationals are increasing and that 16 percent of all arrests made in 2004 were those of foreigners.
But human rights activists working with foreigners say the figures are misleading.
''Foreigners who commit crimes are actually a little less than two percent of the overall figures for criminals in Japan and this has been despite a steady increase in the foreign population," said Sonoko Kawakami of the Japanese chapter of the rights group Amnesty International.
Kawakami says police hype up the profile of foreigners as criminals by mixing up data on arrests with those detained for non-criminal violations such as overstaying visas.
''Crime is increasingly becoming a social problem and police are manipulating the statistics to make foreigners take the brunt of this issue,'' she explained.
Alarmed at the situation following the arrest of the Peruvian, activists working with large minority groups have, among other things, staged a huge rally in Tokyo calling on the police and the government to respect their human rights.
''The arrest of the Peru migrant worker highlights the vulnerability of foreigners living in Japan,'' said Hideki Morihara, spokesman for International Movement Against Racial Discrimination, one of the organisers of the rally.
Morihara says migrant workers have no social support such as counselling or Japanese language help. They are lonely and frustrated in Japanese society that does not understand foreign cultures.
''Foreign workers are treated here as cheap labour, as guests who are here to supply Japanese factories with work, rather than people who must have the same access and benefits as Japanese,'' he said.
An opinion poll conducted last year by the government found that at least 25 percent of Japanese believe that foreigners were a threat to public security and would rather not have foreigners in their midst.
And yet, Japan needs foreign workers to make up for the steady shrinking of its population of 128 million, which is also greying.
Many Japanese businesses are looking to populous countries like China and India as a way out of its looming demographic deficit but others prefer to import migrant labour, especially from among people of Japanese descent in Latin American countries -- though even they cannot escape discrimination.
There are initiatives to ease the situation. Prof. Chikako Yamawaki, at Bunkyoku University, has launched a programme in two primary schools that teaches Japanese students Spanish language and Latin American culture in the hope of fostering deeper cross-cultural understanding.
"I realised that the policy of teaching Japanese language and culture to children of migrant workers does not result in equality for foreigners. Japanese people must learn more about the other side for real cooperation and understanding," she explained. (END/2005) -
New Zealand launches inquiry into exploited Thai labourOriginally posted by BillyBong:There are a few societies where the locals are the cleaners, road sweepers and garbage disposal staff. Developed countries such as Japan, Switzerland and NZ employ locals and not the easy option of FT to perform what others term degrading jobs.
Wellington- The New Zealand government is investigating claims that Thai workers are being exploited and abused in the country, a newspaper reported MondayThai nationals told the Press that they paid up to 14,000 New Zealand dollars (10,400 US dollars) to recruitment agencies in Thailand for lucrative horticulture jobs in New Zealand.
Instead, eight Thai nationals claimed, they worked 60- to 70-hour, seven-day weeks and public holidays, were paid below the minimum wage on occasion and were bullied by supervisors.
The Thai nationals' temporary work permits were revoked by New Zealand's Immigration Service after a dispute with their employer and they face being kicked out of the country.
New Zealand Immigration Minister David Cunliffe said employers had clear legal obligations toward foreign seasonal workers.
"I have a zero-tolerance policy towards worker abuse and any form of malpractice or corruption," Cunliffe told the Press.
"At the same time, it is important that the full facts of any case are known before conclusions are drawn," he said.
One Thai couple among the foreign workers, Orasa Khambut and Surachet Kannika, both 25, said they were told they could earn 2,500 New Zealand dollars a month each but instead take home 200.
The couple's claims were among several cases investigated by the Press newspaper.
A Christian agency assisting the Thais said such cases of exploitation were not uncommon. -
This situation is not unique to Singapore only wad - exists everywhere you go on this planet..... only diffrence is the degree.
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Switzerland sits at the crossroads of several major European cultures, which have heavily influenced the country's languages and cultural practices. Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. The German spoken in the German speaking part of Switzerland is predominantly a range of Swiss dialects, but newspapers and some broadcasts use High German as used in Germany. Many Swiss speak more than one language. English is widely known, especially among professionals.Originally posted by BillyBong:There are a few societies where the locals are the cleaners, road sweepers and garbage disposal staff. Developed countries such as Japan, Switzerland and NZ employ locals and not the easy option of FT to perform what others term degrading jobs.
More than 75% of the population live in the central plain, which stretches between the Alps and the Jura Mountains and from Geneva in the southwest to the Rhine River and Lake Constance in the northeast. Resident foreigners and temporary foreign workers make up about 20% of the population.
Almost all Swiss are literate. Switzerland's 13 institutes of higher learning enrolled 99,600 students in the academic year of 2001-02. About 25% of the adult population hold a diploma of higher learning.
The constitution guarantees freedom of worship and the different religious communities co-exist peacefully.
Switzerland consistently ranks high on quality of life indices, including per capita income, concentration of computer and internet usage per capita, insurance coverage per individual, and health care rates. For these and many other reasons, such as the four languages, it serves as an excellent test market for businesses hoping to introduce new products into Europe. -
The gahmen insisted to increase their own salary and forgotten about the roots... Those people who kept the country running and prosper are completely forgotten... Instead, they reduce their salary and increase the GST.
What type of Gahmen menthod is this? -
you forgot they are making people work till 70..Originally posted by caleb_chiang:The gahmen insisted to increase their own salary and forgotten about the roots... Those people who kept the country running and prosper are completely forgotten... Instead, they reduce their salary and increase the GST.
What type of Gahmen menthod is this?
pushed CPF Withdrawal Age to 65....
do you know how many 40 somethings are pissed off now? -
have u wondered where this kind of mindset was cultivated from?Originally posted by Mat Toro:And how much do they pay for conservancy? Are you willing to pay more?