Tuesday, 7 July 2009, 8:17 am | 4,695 views
The following is a letter to the Manpower Minister, Mr Gan
Kim Yong, by Mr De Souza Jose Socrates on the
6th of July.
The minister has not replied to him. We thank Mr De Souza for
allowing us to publish the letter here – without edit.
Dear Mr Gan,
It is with much disappointment in the government’s and
with your ruling party’s policies that I am writing
to you.
When I was shopping around for clothes on this GSS at
Suntec City’s Levi’s branch, to my surprise, I noticed that
all but one staff working at the outlet were filipino nationals. So
I decided to probe a little further and to my ultimate
surprise, they were very open and proudly declared to me
that they got this job while here on social visit passes.
They also further told me that most of them
working in Levi’s other outlets also obtained this job (sales
assistant) the same way and their sole purpose were to
obtain permanent resident visas so they could bring their
family over to live and work in S’pore. Some also said they
were merely using S’pore as a stepping stone to migrate
to other western first world nations! And this is just
the tip of the iceberg as Levis is not the only company to
have this pratice. Guardian Pharmacy, Watsons, Tenchi Digital
Lifestyle and countless other deparmental stores also
have large foreign labour on their ranks.
Which leads me to ponder on the current
ongoing global economic crisis and the unemployment
situation in S’pore. Your ministry just announced over the past
week that the labour market here is still soft and that we can
also expect more retrenchments to come. During this period of
hardship for many S’poreans, why is your ministry still
allowing more foreign labour (also desired by many of your
fellow minister collegues) and especially those on social
visit passes to easily obtain jobs in S’pore? Dosen’t the ICA
also probe with each application made for work permits as
to how they managed to get the jobs? Don’t tell me that
these are jobs shun by fellow S’poreans? One will just
find it hard to believe!
One also just need to take a stroll down Geylang especially
along Lor 16 and 18 and find that most coffeeshop
assistants working are chinese nationals and the porportion of
S’porean workers supposed to be regulated by legislation just
isn’t there and dosen’t tally up! Needless to mention the vices
that are taking place there on a daily basis. Vietnamese
women would be seen sitting at Lim Beng Coffeehouse
harrassing male patrons aggrasively for their sexual services.
We, as the citizens of S’pore, really need to be asking
ourselves whether we do indeed have a first world government
who have a heart for our people? We are not asking for
more welfare to be disbursed, (which in itself is not a dirty
word) but for the government to
be treating us in a more humane way which is
expected of a first world government in the first place! Your
party have lost interest in our people’s well-being
while in pursuit of even more greedy economic
development and ties with PRC, India etc. I am deeply saddened by
what I see and would hope there would a change in the
politcal situation which reflects the situation by and
large that we are in today. I don’t think we would fall
for the welfare payouts only during election time nor
the nine more Non-constituency seats created for the
oppostition. With this note, I end by hoping that a political
tsunami like March 8th 2008 in Malaysia would take place
here in S’pore to serve as a form of ‘punishment’ for the
PAP government!
Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 10:13 pm | 1,592 views
In an article in the Straits Times on Saturday, 12
September 2009, Professor Ivan Png makes an argument that data
produced by the Ministry of Manpower (MoM) confirms that the
foreign worker buffer is working as intended (“Foreign worker
buffer is working”, p. A34).
He argues that “when the economy booms, Singapore attracts more
foreign workers; when the economy weakens, foreign workers are laid
off and return to their home countries.” And, “to the extent that
this buffer works as intended, unemployment among foreign workers
would be lower than among Singaporeans.”
He then produces a chart that shows that Singapore resident
unemployment has always been higher than total unemployment from
1999 to 2009 and concludes “the resident unemployment rate is
always higher than the total unemployment rate, thus confirming
that the foreign worker buffer is working as intended.”
It is unclear that the evidence produced supports his argument.
If foreign workers serve as a buffer through economic cycles, the
most direct measure of this would be the proportion of Singapore
residents as a fraction of total employment. That is, if
foreign workers serve as a buffer:
a) During good times, more Singaporeans
are employed, and more foreign workers are employed (because there
are too many jobs and not enough Singaporeans). Therefore,
the proportion of employed Singaporean residents as a fraction of
the total workforce would be lower since the total workforce base
has been enlarged.
b) During bad times, if many more foreigners
are sent home than Singaporean residents are retrenched, the
proportion of employed Singaporean residents would rise, since the
size of the total workforce is reduced, but more Singaporeans
retain their jobs.
All the data necessary to prove or disprove this is available to
the Ministry of Manpower, and MoM should analyse it and publish the
results to remove all doubt.
There is, in fact, some evidence that foreign workers do not
serve as a buffer. In the last year, the manufacturing sector
has been one of the most affected by the global slowdown. Yet
figures published by Ministry of Manpower show that the
manufacturing sector shed 4,600 local jobs while adding 24,100
foreign jobs in the year 2008 [1].
When asked in Parliament why this was the case, the Minister of
Manpower, Mr Gan Kim Yong replied:
In 2008, total employment in manufacturing grew by 19,500. The
growth came largely in the earlier part of the year. Although some
companies had cut their headcount, others were still growing and
expanding. Given the tight labour market then with record local
employment rate of 77.0%, manufacturing companies which were still
growing had to recruit foreign manpower to meet their needs.
However, as the economic downturn deepened, both foreign and local
employment in manufacturing fell towards the end of the year. Job
losses in the manufacturing sector were more than offset by jobs
created in other sectors as overall local employment grew by 64,700
in 2008.
Two statements, in particular, stand out: When the economy was
growing, manufacturing companies which were still growing had to
recruit foreign manpower to meet their needs. When the
economic downturn deepened, both local and foreign employment
fell.
Does this not show that foreign workers don’t serve as a
buffer? The data presented, that foreign jobs are added in
manufacturing while local jobs are lost, implies that the
proportion of locals in the manufacturing sector must decrease over
time. And this is indeed the case – figures published by the
MOM show that the proportion of Singaporean residents employed as a
fraction of total employment in manufacturing fell from 62% in
2003[2] to less than 50% in 2008[1].
Comparing resident unemployment rates against total unemployment
as a measure of the effectiveness of foreigners as an employment
buffer is probably requires a number of intermediate steps and
assumptions. Perhaps Prof. Png could publish his methodology,
so that an independent assessment of its soundness may be
obtained.
Astute readers would also note the contrapositive to Prof. Png’s
conclusion: “If the foreign worker buffer is not working as
intended, then the resident unemployment rate would always be lower
than the total unemployment rate.” If this is the case, most
Singaporean residents would probably want the foreign worker buffer
to not work as intended.
—–
[1] Labour Market 2008, March 2009, Ministry of Manpower,
Manpower Research and Statistics Department
[2] Derived from data pubslished in “Employment Trend and
Structure”, May 2004, Ministry of Manpower, Manpower Research and
Statistics Department (Paper 2/2004)
