Andrew Michael Teo
White collar workers in action
When the government opened the doors to migrant workers in the 1990s, one of the reasons that were often cited was due to “lack certain skills” in certain jobs in our local workforce. The other common reason was “migrant workers perform jobs Singaporeans do not want”.
Not too long ago, there were renewed calls for Singaporeans to be tolerant towards migrant workers and professionals, citing their contributions as reasons towards our economic development and growth. To pacify Singaporeans, the government has taken steps to “curb” the inflow of migrant workers and professionals with higher minimum qualified salaries and academic qualifications, to be effective January 2012, how will this affect the wages and livelihood our local workforce?
How effective is the WDA?
The Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) was formed to lead and drive workforce development in Singapore. Its mission is to enhance the employability and competitiveness of our local workforce, from the young and older workers, from the rank-and-file to professional, managers and executives. It provides the necessary relevant, current and most sought after training facilities and courses as well as certification for our workforce to remain competitive and employable in today’s fast changing workplace, and to meet the changing needs of Singapore’s economy. This, in turn, will also help companies build capabilities and remain competitive, contributing to stronger economic growth for Singapore.
As if the current population of 1.13 million migrant workers and professionals, who are supposedly to be skilled in their respective trade, has not done enough to depress local wages, a recent article in the Straits Times, “Foreign workers should get training too”, Member of Parliament (Ang Mo Kio GRC) Yeo Guat Kwang, who is also the Chairman of the Migrant Workers Centre, said that “foreign workers should also get training so as to ‘create a level playing’ for all workers”. He also said that training could be done in two ways – either through in-house courses conducted by employers, or via the Singapore Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) programme offered by WDA.
The introduction of the Singapore Workforce Skills Qualification programmes was to encourage our local workforce, especially those who were retrenched, displaced and older Singaporeans to acquire new skills and to upgrade their skills in order to remain employable, competitive and attract higher wages. However, with the suggestion from MP Yeo, how could our local workforce, despite being certified skilled, be able to attract higher wages when migrant workers and professionals, if they are going to be trained under the WSQ programmes as proposed by MP Yeo, will once again, due to competition for jobs, depress wages?
Prior to any job placement, an employee, regardless of local or migrant, is deemed to have some experiences or qualifications in relation to the job applied for. In the case of migrant professionals or workers, this category of workers must, presumably, already possessed the required skills even before being qualified to work in Singapore. If they need to upgrade, then it must be out of their own time and pocket, but certainly not at government subsidized rates or at the expense of our local workforce only to have them compete against our local workforce and depress wages further.
Wages & Earnings
Sources: Derived based on data from Central Provident Fund Board / Ministry of Manpower
From the table, despite increasing Average (Mean) Monthly Nominal Earnings from 2000 to 2nd quarter 2011, except 2009, we must not overlook the fact that real income, adjusted for inflation, is not taken into account. In addition, it also includes earnings of the top 30% and migrant professionals.
If the government, at the suggestion of MP Yeo, is willing to expend their efforts to upgrade the skills of these migrant workers, then, the same resources should be deployed to train more Singaporeans, especially those in the low wage group, to enable this category of workers to be better employed and improve their earnings in the first place.
The proposal by MP Yeo that “foreign workers should get training too”, has raised some skepticisms to the fact that our local workforce lacks the required skills and hence the need to attract skilled migrant professionals and workers.
- If Singaporeans are trained and certified, and yet has to lose out to untrained migrant workers, then why is there a need to permit 1.13 million migrant workers to work in Singapore? If this is so, is there something not right with regard to our migrant workers policy?
- If foreign “talents” are allowed in and yet requires training, what quality type of “talents” are we, then, attracting? If they have no skills, then why are they here?
- Given that employment passes such as the S-Pass and E-Pass would require holders to have a minimum level of education and a higher level of income qualification , how is it that many holders of such passes are not able to read, write or speak simple English?
In fact, more stringent regulations, such as prohibiting all migrant workers and professionals from switching jobs, should be implemented not only to prevent poaching and abusing of the system, but also generate better employment opportunities for our local workforce.
In addition, MP Yeo’s suggestion of the need to create a relief fund for migrant workers, with the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) taking the lead to raise money for the fund with an initial target of $1 million and slated to start rendering assistance within next year, which, he also said, could be used to assist those involved in salary disputes with employers or awaiting compensation for injury claims, should be disputed since most local employees who are mainly employed by SMEs do not enjoy such privileges.
Dr Ho Nyok Yong, President of the Singapore Contractors Association, also said that better-skilled foreigners could lead to employers paying lower levies. Presently, the levies start from $180 for skilled foreign workers and $280 for those unskilled.
Dr Vincent Wijeysingha, executive director of non-government organisation Transient Workers Count Too, and current Assistant Treasurer of the Singapore Democratic Party, said skills certification can also lead to better self-esteem among foreign workers. He also said, “Foreign workers often have a hard time proving their sense of self-worth because of the assumption that they are unskilled. So the training could lead to equality between them and local workers.”
What Dr Vincent failed to realize is that, skills certification of migrant workers and professionals should be done in the home country of the migrant workers and professionals prior to their arrival here for employment. Verification of the migrant workers’ skills are done by their potential employers here when applying for their work permits and passes. There are many local employees, who despite the fact that they are skilled, also faces the same problem of self-worth in the face of depressed wages in relation to their job scope, skills and experiences.
As the need for migrant workers and professionals was to supplement the skills which our “local workforce may lack”, taxpayers’ monies, in the form of any government subsidized training and courses, must not be wasted in attempting to upgrade the skills of migrant workers since our local workforce would have acquired the necessary skills which they might had been lacking upon their completion of their training. It could also incur the wrath of the local workforce due to the proposed insensitivities.
Henceforth, the government needs to review and readdress Mr. Yeo’s impetuous suggestions regarding upgrading migrant workers and professional skills. Since the last economic restructuring, many of our local professionals who had been grossly displaced from their profession, had undergone retraining, acquired new skills and accepted a lower wage than in their previous profession. Indeed, emphasis should be placed on educating and developing our potential and promising younger local workforce and encourage more employers to engage more local Singaporeans in building a stronger and cohesive workforce.
My sense is that this whole episode contains some huge misunderstandings. As far as I know Dr. V’s organisation deals with unskilled migrant workers involved in the construction industry etc etc. Not those in professional and semi-professional jobs who are competing directly with Singaporeans for jobs. Training and certification in this case would therefore entail being certified for operating certain kinds of machinery, vehicles, or being certfified to carry out certain industrial processes. This would not entail much extra cost since many of these workers have to undergo such training anyway. Recognising it and certifying it would only put the workers in a better position in terms of wages and self-esteem. I see no harm in that at all. However I’m not sure if this is what MP Yeo meant. “Levelling the playing field” was a really soundbite to make, doesn’t really show much media acumen on his part. I can only pray he doesn’t actually mean the ridiculous things that most people would understand from such a statement. who knows.
Yeo Guat Kwang, Chairman of the Migrant Workers Centre, by saying that “foreign workers should also get training so as to ‘create a level playing’ for all workers”, is only confirming that
the agenda of the FT policy is to depress wages. When locals complain their wages are too low, the government and the PAP affiliated union tell them go WDA to upgrade their skills, implying that they are not good enough to earn a higher wage and that the government is already providing help through the WDA, so stop complaining.