The debate on foreigners has been too one-sided, with citizens grousing about there being too many foreigners. Employers need to speak up on the impact if the tap is overtightened.
By Leslie Fong, Published The Straits Times, 10 Sep 2012
HERE is a provocative suggestion - roster every HDB household to do estate cleaning at least once a month.
I offer it only half in jest, after reading in The Straits Times last Thursday that the management committee of Braddell View estate had called for volunteers to help clean up the precinct. Apparently, the ongoing curb on employing foreign workers had resulted in poor service by the fewer cleaners left behind to do the job, despite a 30 per cent hike in their fees.
I understand the committee's desperation - but volunteers? Is it serious? Let's get real.
Its only option, apart from jacking up cleaning fees sky-high, is to try compulsion via rostering. But that is bound to set HDB residents screaming blue murder, so loudly that even Johor Baru will hear them. They will protest that they are already paying for cleaning, and therefore do not see why they should be made to go sweep corridors, void decks and so on. I bet they will not be persuaded even if, in return, the cleaning fees they now pay are waived.
It should be obvious that no estate management committee or town council will ever contemplate so politically suicidal a move as to force residents to get to work with their brooms and mops.
Well, my hope is that it will prompt enough readers to pause and ponder the point I am trying to make, which is that this country needs foreign labour to keep it going.
Life as Singaporeans have lived it will be a lot more expensive and uncomfortable without foreigners doing the dirty or menial jobs they would not dream of doing.
Not true? Just think for a moment what would happen if it were possible to arrange for all foreigners employed here to stop work for a month. Utter chaos will follow. There will be few Singaporeans to collect rubbish, build flats, lay sewerage pipes and power lines, drive buses and trains, provide nursing care and other support services in hospitals, keep factories, shops, restaurants, hawker centres and so on in running order... the list goes on.
And I have not even mentioned maids.
Some quiet reflection on this bleak scenario will get more Singaporeans to appreciate the presence of foreign workers than the "Immigration Bonus" proposed by three academics. In their opinion piece in The Straits Times on Aug 8, researchers Yolanda Chin, Norman Vasu and Nadica Pavlovska from Nanyang Technological University argued that money can be raised from levies on foreign workers, and then distributed to citizens as a tangible benefit derived from Singapore's open-door immigration policy.
Without putting too fine a point on it, what they are advocating is using money raised from taxing the blood, sweat and tears put in by foreign workers, albeit paid by their bosses, to appease the anti-immigration lot. I would call that bribery.
That notwithstanding, the bonus idea will not work because, as bribes go, whatever amount that is ultimately distributed to every citizen is likely to be so paltry as to invite derision rather than the desired appreciation.
What I find even more unsettling about their proposal is the underlying message of appeasing those strident voices who have been clamouring for a clampdown on admitting foreign workers and who appear to have hijacked what should have been a calm, rational debate on an issue of grave importance to the economy and lives of all Singaporeans.
As it is, these vehement voices have succeeded in some measure in pressuring the Government to tighten the issuing of work permits and employment passes to foreigners, often to the detriment of businesses already reeling from the worldwide economic downturn and the greed of local landlords. Thus emboldened, they can only get more rabid.
This is why I feel compelled to write to remind the powers that be that there are others in Singapore who look askance at the sweeping demonisation of foreigners by those who, for whatever reasons, are ever eager to blame immigration for everything that is not going right, from crowded trains to escalating property prices.
More to the point, I fear the cascading effects on the economy of businesses forced to scale down or close altogether because they cannot find sufficient workers.
Yes, the influx of foreign workers has been at a pace the infrastructure cannot cope with - but must the swing to the other end of the pendulum be halted only after enough Singaporeans have been thrown out of their jobs because their companies just cannot carry on or have decided to relocate elsewhere? I am sure I am not the only one worried about the choking effect of a drastic cutback in much-needed foreign labour.
I expect this rejoinder: Businesses should automate, raise productivity and pay better wages to get Singaporeans, rather than rely forever on cheap foreign labour. And I say yes, I agree - but up to a point.
Some jobs just cannot be automated or re-engineered. It is hard to replace chambermaids or hospital attendants with machines, and there is a limit to the productivity that can be squeezed out of them. An attendant trying to push two wheelchairs at the same time is not more productive, but a menace to his patients' safety.
Pay more, sure, but how much more without adding substantially to higher prices for all? Let me illustrate with a real-life example.
I know of a supermarket chain at its wits' end trying to recruit Singaporeans to man its checkout lines. It tried all possible avenues, including organisations helping former convicts and disabled people. In a recent exercise aimed at hiring about 60, a grand total of two Singaporeans accepted. One quit after three days, not bothering even to collect his wages.
How much does it pay a checkout line cashier? A basic monthly salary of $1,200. Well, why not $2,000, an increase of 67 per cent? That should attract enough Singaporeans, no?
Assuming that is so, a mini- mart with five checkout lines needing 12 cashiers to work two shifts seven days a week will be looking at a hike in cost of $145,000 per annum (including Central Provident Fund contributions). The biggest store in this chain needs 90 cashiers for two shifts.
And that is not all. There will be a knock-on effect. The supervisors of cashiers will have to be paid more, as do the junior managers. And so up the line it goes. It does not take a genius to figure out that the supermarket chain will have to pass on the increased cost to consumers, who then have to pay more for groceries.
This will be the scenario played out at every business that cannot get enough local workers either because they find the salaries offered too low or, as is often the case, they do not want those jobs at all.
Hence while I accept that too easy an access to foreign labour does press wages down for Singaporeans at the lower rungs of the ladder, I caution against reaching for easy answers like clamping down on foreign workers across the board or forcing wages up with nary a thought about the impact on inflation and Singapore's competitive advantage.
In this regard, Singapore is caught between a rock and a hard place, largely because its citizens have not been reproducing themselves adequately, whether as a result of a too-successful family planning programme in yesteryears or a lifestyle choice in more recent decades.
Collectively, all have contributed to the severe shrinkage of the indigenous workforce, including the ones who have been agitating the most against the employment of foreigners to make up the shortfall.
That is water under the bridge.
Until the happy day when Singaporeans produce many times more babies than they do now, the country will have to continue to grapple with balancing the inflow of foreign workers with moves to improve the lot of low- wage groups.
The debate should be centred on how many foreign workers are too many, not just shutting them out. Is the existing "too many" really too many if not enough Singaporeans are willing to fill the jobs those "too many" are doing?
And therein lies the problem - there is plenty of sound and fury but not enough data in the public domain on how many jobs in which sectors are going a-begging, and whether employers really have no choice but to fill them with foreign hires.
Thus far, only one side of the story has been ventilated - loudly, sometimes belligerently. The employers have not been heard enough.
If they - or whoever else has done the hard calculations on what the clampdown thus far has or will cost their businesses and Singapore's economy - do not speak up, then they will lose the debate.
And all of us will have to pay for it.
The writer, the former editor of The Straits Times, is the senior executive vice-president for marketing at Singapore Press Holdings.
I think businesses are speaking out but they are not heard. Well whatever. The costs should be passed to the consumers. There is no free lunch after all. If you don't use cheap foreign labor now then you won't get to use them later cause everywhere else will get developed and there will be no cheap foreign labor. Policy changes here and there anyway. Everyone just has to get by it be the policy be for the better or worse.
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