[Singapore] - The Bangladesh laborer is struggling to recover
his $7k unpaid wages from the employer, who everyone thinks is the
rich local bad guy. But it's not so straightforward. Turns out the
employer is also a Bangladesh national, and is now himself broke,
because he, in turn, is himself struggling to recover $100k in
unpaid wages from a contractor.
Reminds me of something a friend, who worked at one of the
largest real estate developers in Singapore for over a decade, once
shared : the biggest players in the real estate industry in
Singapore (and no doubt all over the world), often outrageously
bully the many smaller contractor companies they hire (to do the
actual supply & construction works), by abusing clauses in
their contracts (which the smaller contractor companies have no
choice but to accept, otherwise the contract will go to someone
else) that allow them to legally withhold and delay payment for
extended period of times, so much so that in my friend's time
working in that real estate developer giant (hint : 1 of the top 3
biggest and richest in Singapore), he has seen many (literally
dozens) of SMEs go bankrupt as a result of withheld payment.
Even my friend himself (who worked his way up to a mid-level
position for the real estate developer position before he left)
says he knows it's an obvious, blatant, unjustified abuse of power,
of the big rich developer company bullying the poor
desperate-for-contracts SMEs, and in my friend's own words, is
"seriously bad karma" (when SMEs consequently go bankrupt, many
employees get retrenched, lose their jobs, and a few of the SME
owners, consequently saddled with insurmountable debts, actually
commited suicide).
Unfortunately, it's an entrenched industrial practice with the
law on their side (obviously the real estate giants can hire the
best lawyers to craft biased contracts and to handle disputes in
their favor), so that's little my friend (or anyone in that
position) as an individual can do about it.
But are you really surprised? In the biggest industries
involving the biggest money (eg. finance, pharma, etc), corruption
is to be expected. Welcome to humanity. Welcome to physical
incarnation. Welcome to Earth.
http://mothership.sg/2017/01/despite-hauling-employer-to-labour-court-migrant-worker-unable-to-retrieve-unpaid-wages/
Edited to add : the Bangladeshi employer who can't pay the
Bangladeshi worker the $7k, because he himself is struggling to get
the $100k owed to him by a contractor? Don't be surprised if the
contractor himself is struggling to pay the $100k to the
Bangladeshi employer, because he himself is being owed millions by
the real estate property developer (like the one my friend worked
in). See the cascading effect of ruin to so many innocent poor
people as a result of the unethical billionaires at the top of the
real estate developer giants?
