Word in the New$: Labour

by Ryan Ong

LABOUR is still a dirty word to Singaporeans. Let’s face it – most of us still know parents who point at road sweepers, and threaten that “if you don’t study hard, that’s what you will be like.” But over the past few decades, our idea of what labour is has changed:

Labour day is when we celebrate the efforts of physical workers, and rightly so. That train you ride to work? People have died operating and building it. The garbage dump at your flat? It doesn’t clear itself. The person serving you a $30 steak dinner? It probably takes her six hours of work to afford the same meal.

But Singaporeans don’t treasure manual labour. To some of us, it’s even a sign of stupidity (e.g. if you had a degree/masters, this wouldn’t happen.) An odd attitude, given that most of our ancestors – at some point in their life – probably pulled a rickshaw, laid a brick or fried an egg for a richer man.

A whole generation has grown up believing that, with a white collar, you are above the problems that plague “lesser” labourers. So it’s a hard, backhanded slap that Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (PMETs) are the ones suffering the most these days. Of all the Singaporeans and Permanent Residents laid off in 2015, 71.1 per cent were PMETs.

A growing chorus of PME cries

Most Professionals, Managers and Executives (PMEs) are not Union members. Blame on the presumptuous mindset that these workers are a cut above the rest – a bankers’ protest conjures images of a dozen rich people moaning over Chardonnay, not starved and desperate workers.

According to the NTUC U PME Centre though, the number of PMEs looking for help is on the rise. The number of PMEs in need of a job jumped from 253 to 518, between March 2015 to February 2016. Some 77 per cent of these PMEs are aged 40 and above.

The number of protection cases (i.e. PMEs fighting termination or facing salary issues) rose from 212 to 258.

This is due to turmoil in the oil and gas, finance, and electrical manufacturing industries.

NTUC wants more protection for our PMEs

NTUC has highlighted two areas in which it wants more protection for PMEs. The first is to target Employment Pass (EP) applications of companies that show “weak commitment” in hiring and grooming Singaporean PMEs. This will partly be based on whether companies meet industry average ratios of Singaporeans to foreigners.

It’s a good initiative, but it will mean a headache for Human Resources – some companies are going to end up trying to prove that they can’t find similar talent in Singapore. That may not be straightforward in some industries, especially in creative fields like advertising.

NTUC also wants more support for the existing Career Support Programme (CSP), which provides employment help to PMEs making at least $4,000 a month. It is a wage support scheme, with the government covering 20 to 40 per cent of the wages of older PMEs. Good timing, given that this is the hardest hit segment – but we still don’t have details on what the new measures will cover (probably more job fairs and increased wage support for the hardest hit sectors.)

One of the unstated challenges NTUC will face, however, is getting more PMEs to engage with them. This segment of the workforce is less likely to have sought out NTUC for help before. In order to reach out, NTUC is expanding into a “pay per use” rather than traditional “pay per month” approach; workers need not be Union members who may pay dues, but just workers who can engage NTUC’s help when needed.

Bringing all our labour under one umbrella

While PMEs are the hot topic of the year, NTUC’s outreach is also aimed at Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and freelance workers. NTUC will be adding several associate partners and members, which include 70,000 workers in 3,000 SMEs.

Part of what distinguishes Singapore’s only labour union is its close collaboration with employers and the government. Unlike unions in other countries, which tend to have an adversarial (i.e. picket the office and throw things) relationship, NTUC acts more as a mediator.

Freelance or contract workers, which are a growing addition to Singapore’s workforce, have also become a priority. This group was largely ignored in the past. Back in the ’80s, saying you were full freelancer was akin to proclaiming yourself a unicorn; everyone assumed you were kidding. Today, they’re not only recognised as integral to the workforce, but as a sort of proto-start-up (many transition from successful freelancing to launching their own company.)

As Singapore’s job market heads toward an increasingly muddled future, we can no longer look at just corporate innovation. Our labour union needs to evolve as well, and gone are the days when “worker” meant someone screwing nuts onto bolts at an assembly line. Today’s workers range from street sweepers to aeronautics engineers to professional bloggers – and it would have to be a monolithic (yet still adaptable) – Union to encompass all these professions.

 

Featured image White-collar recession. | Blue-collar depression, Singapore by Flickr user digitalpimp. (CC BY-ND 2.0)

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The post Word in the New$: Labour appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Ryan Ong