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.
