Ho Yixian
On April 21, the front page of the Straits Times featured PM Lee speaking at the official opening of a US$3 billion electronics plant, where he proudly proclaimed:
“Without the foreign workers, we would not have attracted this US$3 billion investment, and Intel and Micron would have built its wafer fab elsewhere.”
This bold assertion naturally received maximum coverage by our national newspaper with minimum thought or additional research. Nowhere did the reporters reveal any interest in capturing the thoughts of other relevant parties. No attempt was made to interview the senior management of the plant or workers on the ground to explore the nuances of the issue. What were their top priorities when determining the location of the plant? Did they also consider Singapore’s efficient transport and telecommunications infrastructure, well educated workforce, and low corporate tax rates? More importantly, would they have chosen Singapore had they been allowed to hire only 3 in 10, or even 2 in 10 foreign workers, instead of the 4 in 10 they eventually settled for? Our Straits Times correspondents abdicated their responsibilities as reporters and chose instead to be stenographers for the Prime Minister.
And if these reporters had bothered to ask the pertinent questions, they might have stumbled onto the true crux of the foreign worker issue. The PM and other members of the PAP have repeatedly tried to frame the foreign worker debate in this election as a question of ‘Have the total benefits of having foreign workers in Singapore outweighed the costs?’, while asserting that preventing foreign workers from working in Singapore would lead many MNCs to pull out of Singapore. At best, the PAP is employing an indefensible strawman to hit like a pinata at a party. At worst, the PAP is failing to comprehend a basic concept every A level economics student learns.
No serious opposition party is advocating shutting out all foreign workers completely; most argue that over the past 5 years, too many have been let into Singapore too quickly. It is not about total benefits versus total costs. It is about marginal benefits versus marginal costs. The first foreign worker let into Singapore, for the sake of argument the CEO of a local HQ, probably created many jobs and didn’t take up much space on our roads and trains. The next few hundred thousand maybe added to our talent pool or did jobs Singaporeans loathed to do. The millionth, however, has in all likelihood created minimum benefits for Singaporeans, and is that person taking up the last space on the MRT at rush hour.
The fact that all the foreign workers in Singapore have in aggregate brought more good than harm does nothing to prove that the PAP has allowed the optimum number into Singapore. And while it may be true that MNCs like Intel would not locate their plants here if they were not allowed to hire foreign workers, that is far from the issue. The issue is whether they would have located their plants in Singapore had they been allowed to hire fewer foreign workers. That is what the PAP has glossed over by making sweeping statements that mis-characterise the complaint of many Singaporeans.
Case in point – the much vaunted Integrated Resorts, those supposed creators or 35,000 jobs. Once again PM Lee pulled out his trusty strawman and claimed that “(the IRs) would not have decided to invest here had we required them to recruit only Singaporeans.” We already know this is the wrong question – the right question is whether they would have decided to invest here had we required them to recruit more Singaporeans. The common refrain is that even if the government had legislated for fewer foreign workers, there were not enough Singaporeans willing to take up jobs in the IRs. This argument is once again wide off the mark. The truth? There were not enough Singaporeans willing to take up jobs in the IRs at the wages they were offering. And make no mistake – the IRs can afford to pay higher wages. Helped no doubt by the artificially depressed wages they have had to pay their employees, in the last quarter “Marina Bay Sands generated the highest quarterly adjusted property EBITDA and EBITDA margin from any single property in the history of (Las Vegas Sands).”
Another favourite assertion by the PAP is that “we can certainly stop foreign workers from coming to Singapore, but we cannot stop companies from leaving.” In the PAP’s telling, Singaporeans will compete with foreign workers to supply the global demand for labour regardless of whether these workers reside in Singapore. They forget that it is not the foreign worker that competes against the Singaporean worker, but the foreign worker and his foreign infrastructure that competes against the Singaporean worker and Singapore’s infrastructure. And while the latter could be a level playing field, the Singaporean is put at a disadvantage as soon as the foreign worker with lower wage expectations is brought into Singapore to immediately enjoy the benefits of the infrastructure built with taxes previously levied on Singaporeans.
So while it may be true that Singaporeans already compete with foreign labour to a certain extent, it is a gross exaggeration to assert that all MNCs in Singapore are going to leave for foreign shores simply because of cheaper labour elsewhere. To give credit where it is due, the PAP over the past 52 years has ensured that Singapore has a multitude of infrastructural and administrative advantages besides cheap labour.
So yes, if absolutely no foreign workers were allowed into Singapore we might not be able to attract the likes of Intel, and MNCs might leave Singapore in droves. But we must recognise this as election rhetoric – an oversimplication of a nuanced issue for the sake of deflecting criticisms that the PAP has let in too many foreigners too quickly. We must not behave like dumb crows or Straits Times reporters and flee in fear at the first sight of the PAP’s strawman.
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YES, ALL MANUFACTURING COMPANIES ARE GIVEN SUBSIDIES FROM DAY ONE TO COME HERE, TAX FREE HOLIDYAS TOO, WHO IS PAYING, TAX PAYERS OF COURSE, IT CANNOT BE FROM LKY’S POCKET OR LSS’S POCKET,
BUT DOES THE TAX PAYERS BENEFIT, THINK……
YOU THE TAX PAYER GET THE GOOD JOBS ?
WHY ARE THESE COMPANIES IN ALL KINDS, CALLED FDI, NEEDING SO MUCH OF SUBSIDIES OF ALL KINDS AND TAX FREE STATUS FOR 10 YEARS, WHY,
THE CEO’S ARE DOING THEIR JOB, HELL NO, MILKING THE ISLAND NATION, AND THEY CLAIM THEY DON’T HAVE A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD, HOW CAN THEY SAY THAT WHEN SO MUCH OF SUBSIDIES ARE GIVEN, IT JUST SHOWS THEY ARE NOT “UP TO IT” AND THEY WANT HIGH CEO PAYOUT, CHEAPEST OF LABOR, NOT SINGAPOREANS BUT CHEAPEST.
TRY SLAVES !!!
IT JUST SHOW, THAT THESE COMPANIES WILL NOT BE ABLE TO MAKE IT ANYWHERE IN S.E.A, WITH STRICT LABOR LAWS IN INDONESIA, THAILAND, WHY NOT TRY CHINA, INDIA, CEO’S…
IT JUST SHOWS OUR MINSTERS ARE DUDS, PLAYING ALONG THIS LINE, USING TAX PAYERS MONEY AND CPF FUNDS TO FUND THEIR HIGH WAGES FOR THEMSELVES, VIA HIGH GDP !
SLAVE TRADING IS THE NORM HERE, AS LEVIES ARE COMING IN BY THE MILLIONS AND BILLIONS, FOREIGN LEVY OF ALL KINDS, INCLUDING MAIDS….
AND YOU BLAME PARENTS FOR NO BABIES, YOU MEAN YOU WANT YOUR BABIES TO BE SLAVES..?
DID YOU VOTE FOR THESE DUDS ???
I SURE DID NOT SINCE 1986………..
AND I SURE WILL NOT ……….!!!!!!!!!!!
DUDS=DAFTS
DAFTS=DUDS
Why are foreign workers hired instead of Singaporeans? s it true that they are ALL, better skilled and better educated? Definitely not.
Lets take a look at one scenario, I know personally, which is being repeated in many companies island wide.
If a Singaporean is hired at S$1,500.00 salary, he falls under the Employment act, whereby he can only work for 44 hours a week, and he has to be paid overtime if he works in exces thereof.
Further the employer has to contribute to CPF of 15% amounting to $225.00 so the total pay package is S$1725.00.
Take home salary of the singaporean worker = S$1,200.00
If you are an S pass holder and are paid above S$2000,00. eg. in my company the rate is S$2,005.00. the S pass holder does not fall within the employment act.
The Employer does not pay CPF.
Take home salary of the S Pass Holder = S$2,005.00.
To jusitify his higher salary, the S pass holder is asked to work from 9 am to about 10pm and they also work on saturdays as well.
As such, they work an average of 64 hours a week including saturday half day less one hour lunch during the weekdays..
This way, they work 20 hours more per week and this comes to 80 hours of extra work per week which the employer can squeeze out of the S pass holder.
In this respect every 2 Pass Holdes will contribute the work time of 3 Singaporean workers per month.
ie. if you hire 3 Singaporeans = S5,175.00 and the two S pass Holders works out to S$4,010.00.
The cost saving and the manner the S pass holders are manipulated are the primary motivators for this the S pass Holders being employed.
The only way this can be avoided is to raise the S pass salalry cap to $5,000.00.
In this way locals will face less competition and any foreign talent who comes to Singpaore will be turly professional who can contribute to the economy of Singapore rather than make the numbers.
This wil be a win win situation for Singaporeans.
I am replying to AFriendInNeed. Now that we have a small opposition in Parliament in Aljunied GRC, although merely a foothold, I would like to suggest that we ask for people who have become victims of elites teaming up with State Institutions to hound them to tell their stories of how they have been harassed. This kind of symbiosis is common in the failed States of the Middle East where the Elites routinely get the secret police on the trail of their enemies to crush them. In these states the tyranny is open, where people are pulled out of their cars and smacked. Here in Singapore it is more covert.Here a prominent personality close to the Govt, frequently a ‘top’lawyer, calls his friends in the ISD to do the job on his enemy. Nowadays because of the bad press on Muslims, MUIS is also a great player. Together, in one case, MUIS and the ISD weave a web of lies into the personal identity electronic records of of their targets in the ICA. So the hapless citizen is victimized by checks and threats each time he makes an appearance at an Immigration Checkpoint. His complaints to the Authorities typically will not elicit any response or at best negative response. Even the AG will scorn him and refuse the State’s Courts to investigate why he is tormented. The victim is forced into a desperate state of being assailed by unknown forces for undeclared crimes. This will continue until the end of his litigation where he will be soundly trounced by a judge who is also a part of this symbiotic arrangement.
There is an evil symbiotic arrangement between elites and State Institutions which can readily be commandeered to go after the enemies of the elites’ friends. No longer are these premier policing institutions focussed on enemies of the State ( Mas Selamat escaped because the security police are running all over the place in errands for their political masters).
I hope that people will read this posting of mine and yours and add to the narrative, so that we can get a groundswell of evidence of this sort of corruption. You must know that being in control of the electronic identity records is a strategic tool to cow anyone because every aspect of his life can then be monitored and assasinated. This kind of ambush is the sharp edge of States that are consolidating power beyond normal politics. We have got to stop it before it becomes widespread. I have a feeling that it is already widespread but our genteel population do not want to tell of how they have been violated by a string of thuggish State Institutions at the behest of elite lawyers on instructions of client