On manufacturing type business owner, what they look for is
cheap labour, cheap rental of factory space. But the singaporean
labour salary is too high already, with that kind of labour cost,
they cant compete with other poorer countries. Imagine you
manufacture garments and export to US for USD$5 per piece in
singapore, and i manfacture the same garments, export to same
customer for same price of USD$5, but i am manufacturing it in
cambodia/china/sri lanka etc. Guess who can earn more money???The
US customer dont care where you manufacture it, what is your cost,
as long it's same quality same price, it's ok for them.
So, based on the view of a factory towkay in singapore, your salary
is too high already. That's why they hire malaysian, PRC chinese to
work in their factories.
For a consturctions company towkay, it's the same, go to a big
construction site, only those management level or admin staff with
very clean clothes are local. Those who are sweating, with very
dirty clothes, thay are all Thai/PRC chinese/bangladesh. On their
point of view, singaporean labour are too costly to use.
On service line, like Mac which u mentioned, i guess they somehow
need to stick to using local. Becuase as a service line staff, you
should be able to communicate very well, hiring a local chinese,
they can speak mandarin,english and some dialets(No racism to local
malay/tamil, they are fine too, they have no problem communicating
with locals, but chinese is highest population here, so most
customers should be chinese, so knowing Hokkien/Cantoese/Teochew
might be better), which a better choice than hiring some foreign
worker who cant even speak proper english. (hiring ang mo who speak
perfect english in not wise also, bcos they are expensive, and they
can speak local languanges.)
But still ,they want the chapest choice out of local, like elderly
and teens.
On the view of the workers(be it labour/service line/clerk), i
understand it's a real pain when u see govt keep increasing price
of things like public transport, price of housing keep increasing
too, but your salary is not incresing as fast as the cost of your
living. But the salaries are decided by the company owners based on
some market values. It's a supply and demand thing, when they offer
a salary and there's alot of supply(those who willing to work),
they have the upper hand, they dont have to pay you so much. When
the demand is high, when you post job ads and hardly anyone come to
interview, they have to increase the salary to attract more
people.
On the government point of view, it's hard to say, and i have no
right to represent them.
Who do they care most?investor?local rich business man?High salary
tax payer?low salary tax payer?Their own profit to feed the fat
minister even fatter?
Which way they want to go to boost economy? more industrial
buiness? more service line business? tourism? The casino thing?
property market?
Do they want to make the poor richer to make the gap smaller?or
they want to squeeze more out of the rich? Or they dont care about
the gap at all??
Talking about inflation, isn't the goverment playing one important
role on it?Many of our daily cost can be controlled by goverment.
HDB flat price, public transport price, your PUB bill, even your
phone/internet bill.
