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Maybe I should entitle all commentaries on the million dollar gems of wisdom from our dear million dollar gahmen as "Something STupid" (Haha STupid...get it? ;)
MORE than 30,000 jobs will be created this year - enough to absorb the pool of fresh graduates and new job-seekers, Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang said yesterday ( Read more... )
MORE than 30,000 jobs will be created this year - enough to absorb the pool of fresh graduates and new job-seekers, Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang said yesterday ( Read more... )
But yeah that's my point. It's a net loss (I checked the sub headlines of the article, indeed losses are expected to exceed gains)
Which confirms that the logic of the article is very very dubious. How can you isolate jobs in the economy? My point is, OK assuming it's really true that 30K grads join the workforce every year, how can you assume that the 30K jobs that will be created are "fresh grads only please" jobs?
It is very very extremely unlikely it will be - most people with jobhunting experience will share that it's not that easy to get hired as a fresh grad because you're seen as being experience-less.
This means that the retrenched people could be fighting with you. Given then that there are more job seekers than jobs, obviously some people will be left without a jobs. And obviously, this will include a number of fresh grads.
What tenuous logic - I can't believe they'd resort to such a weird illogical trick to pull wool over our eyes to make it seem as though things are fine and dandy.
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Hey, the government had to thread a thin line between on one hand, make sure the populaiton don't loose hope (or the cynic may say: don't dislike the government) but also want the population to take the opportunity to self-improve and increase their competitiveness.
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I only wish that the world of business were really so clear cut, that competition is fair and that people are rewarded based on their merit. In reality things largely happen due to the logic of emotions, not the logic of the marketplace.
As for the last line of the article, you actually have to read into the bits that ST left out due to piss-poor paraphrasing.
What Gan Kim Yong is actually saying is this:
If companies are forced to adhere to stringent labour restrictions and lay off only foreign workers while being compelled to retain locals, they will lose some of their competitive edge since foreigners are frequently willing to work for 40-60% of what a Singaporean would demand. In gamer terms foreigners are broken and need to be nerfed.
So if companies could lay off only these relatively cost-efficient workers, their bottom line would be affected, they'd lose the competitive edge, they'd lose people with the most effective offshore contacts, hence they may be forced to close down in drastic cases, or they could relocate to countries with cheaper labour costs.
Then, we would see loss in job creation because technically this company is no longer Singaporean. So, the jobs are largely no longer going to Singaporeans. In practice some will, because maybe at all levels the company retains some of its Singaporean staff. But fewer than before, and also, these jobs no longer "belong" to Singapore.
To illustrate: let's say my company is based in SG. I do a lot of business in Malaysia. It is a big advantage to me to have Malaysians working for me, so I employ as many as I can, within the ratio limit currently in place.
Retrenchment time! There're a bunch of Singaporeans who're not doing as much for me as the Malaysians. I want to release the Singaporeans because they're not worth it to keep around.
But if I am forced to release only foreigners, my business will suffer.
So what can I do? Let's say that for the purposes of this example the Malaysian market is a LOT more fertile and expansive than Singapore. The best thing for me would be to try and obtain PR status or citizenship in Malaysia and set a company entity there, which will be the center of my operations. I will then be free of Singaporean labour law restrictions. I will be able to still hire some Singaporeans, but mostly the Malaysians who are producing the most for the company. And I have no particular incentive to specially focus on hiring Singaporeans just because of who they are.
So if companies relocate their head offices away from Singapore, that would indeed result in job losses for us. That is the explanation.
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Assuming the same job grade I don't think a foreign manager will get paid less than a local manager, even if the foreigner is not on expat terms? I don't think so right? I mean in a decent respectable firm, not a bloodsucking one lah.
I mean if you're a respectable MNC paying your PRC worker who lives and works in Singapore (mind you not very cheap ah) half the pay of the SG worker it just makes you look so so bad first and foremost.
Secondly, the foreign labor you're trying to attract will probably think 2x about coming over. I mean if you're going to give a Malaysian half a Singaporean's pay and expect him to be based in Singapore I think he/she will seriously rather stay in Malaysia.
Yes I agree it would erode one of Singapore's oft-touted advantages - the supposed "free labor market advantage". I also agree that some expats are business critical (eg: the imported scientists here to spearhead Biomania)
But from what I see, and what others have told me, alot of expats are just here to party and live the good life. From a work perspective I hardly see any disparity between a foreigner and a normal Singaporean in terms of productivity and output. One can argue about the "creativity and the foreign perspective", but I have yet to see this in action in the workplace yet.
Now, if you ad such a law that demanded only expats get retrenched, then yes you could loose some very valuable employees - ie: the business critical ones. That's true.
But if you consider that the foreign talent argument is way too overhyped (ie: alot are more foreign than talent), and if you assume equal pay beweteen the Singaporean & the foreigner (I'm quite sure that they actually draw a similar pay for a same job rank) then I don't really know what you'll really lose?
Just the other night I was reading about Denmark. It's a country that has intellectual fecundity, home to some of the world's largest industry players (including my company, Lego, Bang & Olufsen, Carlsberg etc), it's not a very big country, they don't have a government that's manic and obsessed with LET'S IMPORT TURKISH AND EASTERN EUROPEAN FOREIGN TALENT INTO DENMARK. But yes what I described about Denmark can basically be applied to any Scandinavian country.
And then you wonder - they don't aggressively attract foreigners into the country the way we do, why do so many Nobel Laureates and big industry names come from Scandinavia? What is it about their fundamentals did they get right, that they don't have to keep trying to bring in foreign labor to depress wages (through increased competition, rather than "hehehehe since you're just a PRC I'll just pay you half a Singaporean's pay").
If we keep harping on and being obsessed (I really do honestly feel we are manically obsessed with this foreign talent thing, to the point that it's almost the boring unappetizing staple in the food for "thought" that MnM offers to practically every leader, ho hum) with foreign talent, then I really do feel that we are barking up the wrong tree.
Because firstly you don't actually depress your costs that much as I have shown above. At least not in the industries that you want to shine in. (If you're a toilet cleaning firm then the above argument does not apply :P)
Secondly, foreign talent is by nature mobile - the PRCs, Malaysians blah blah blah are likely to go back or go somewhere else.
In other words, they will end up as your competitors. OK you can argue "Ah but we can always bring in a fresh pool of talent" but you don't have a strategy to stay ahead of the game. You're just floating around in the game and the best you can do is to hope that the replacements are more foreign and more talent thna their predecessors.
The question we should be asking therefore is - What can Singapore do to develop an economic advantage that is quintessentially Singaporean?
And no sorry throwing a mishmash of cultures and nationalities into this country and hoping something uniquely Singaporean will pop up out of nowehre is not an acceptable answer. It is one that is just contradiction-ridden.
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This ensure the "assumption" of wage disparity is moot. It is still much more cost effective to have them around.
I think we are way off target in harping on the government foregin talent policy. They didn't hire them, it is the businesses and companies which did. And if the business are MNC, they can easily move shop to the foreginers home country, and if the busienss are Singaporean, then go protest at their companies for being un-patriotic and not loving Singapore instead of blaming Singapore.
And you know, for all the families with maid, they are a big source of the problem as well. IF they should have hired local domestic helpers by offering good salary (I am sure $2000 a month will be sufficient in this climate) instead of relying on foreginers. People who are aganist government's foregien talent policy should go protest at those people house as well.
Anyway, my point about the issue of "foregin talent" is that it is really a commercial decision by commercial entities and it is unfair and misguided to lament on the government (at least in the job market aspect ... leave out the education aspect for the monent)
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There are foreigners who are paid a premium because they bring perceived value into the country.
There are foreigners, and far more in this category I think, who are happy to work here for less than what a Singaporean would demand.
You have to understand, for example $1.8k here is peanuts pay for a managerial post, to a Singaporean. To a Malaysian it's good pay. An equivalent wage demanded by a Singaporean would be $3k or so. The Malaysian represents a significant potential cost saving opportunity to the local employer. I know enough examples to say, you're incorrect in saying that the Malaysian paid roughly half of a Singaporean's demanded paycheque would rather stay in Malaysia. There's a reason Singaporeans are being undercut.
So no, they do not draw similar pay for the same job rank. Currency difference is one factor. Cultural expectations is another (this is why I was complaining a while back about Singaporeans' sense of entitlement).
Regarding what you would actually lose -- you completely ignore the facet of international business when considering the potential loss to a company who has international operations. Their foreign employees are frequently hired because of their particular cultural and regional experience and knowledge. A Singaporean without such attributes would *not* be able to produce the same value.
You have to expand your definition of "talent" somewhat. It's not just talent in terms of measurable merits that show up on a level playing field. There *IS* no level playing field. If I do a lot of business in Dubai and I need to have a department, I will want to staff that department with a significant number of people who know Dubai. This will very likely include many who are natives of the UAE. They represent something almost no Singaporean can give me.
As for Denmark you are opening up another huge avenue of argument. If you want to bring up Denmark as an example we could engage in a book-long discussion of every aspect of their national development, taking into account all the relevant socio-economic-historic-political factors. It can become incredibly complex. There is no point in bringing in Denmark or any Scandinavian country as an example of someone who "got it right". We simply don't know enough about Denmark to say we can compare our situation to theirs and do what they do right. We don't know how much of their apparent success is due to extraneous factors. We don't know whether we can reproduce the same conditions here or implement the same measures with the same amount of success.
All labour is mobile. All companies are in competition. There is nothing Singapore needs to do -- there is only what *companies* need to do. Singaporean labour is about as mobile as any foreign talent. To see the mobility of foreign talent as constituting some sort of threat or a cause of undue "competition" is a short-sighted view to take. In the case of matters involving national prestige and identity, sure, it is indeed laughable that "our" Li Jiawei got us a medal, and then threw down the citizenship and married back into China (but we got their Gong Li who's more chio than Li Jiawei so overall we win out hahaha).
But no one ought to bat an eyelid when a Malaysian manager gives notice and goes to work for a Japanese company, or when an American executive working in Singapore goes back to the USA, or when a PRC engineer having done work for a Singaporean company for a few years in Singapore leaves and goes to work for an MNC instead.
I mean, think about it. Is there a pressing reason why these people should not have been hired by their Singaporean employers in the first place?
*People move*. Sometimes they move into a country. Sometimes they move out. *There is nothing wrong with this*.
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Well if that is really the case, then these managment personal are on their way out as well.
In any case, able to adapt to office politics is part of the productivity of a worker as well. If he/she can't get along in office and can't communicate effectively to the boss (i.e. let the boss appreciate his/her value without making the boss feel threatened), honestly he/she is that great a worker as well.
And remember the whole point of the discussion IS about how young grads can compete with retrenced and exprienced workers, well if these older people don't know how to present themselves and play the game (because they are retrenched not because they have low productivity but simply because they are not well liked), then young grads can still compete effectively by being more "pleasant". So the job are still available for these kids.
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It's not true that a company has also necessarily singled out these slackers in time for Retrenchment Day. Politics plays a massive role for instance. At other times just erm, sheer corporate stupidity?
I know of a company that recently axed departments based on their perceived uselessness. This means that even if you were a shining star in that "useless" department, you would be axed along with everyone else.
Obviously no "relevant mgmt personnel" would tell you "No of course it's not about meritocracy. I'll keep the one that licks my boots better and I'll fire the upcoming star as he or she could unseat me in a few years time" obviosuly!
You know uh, how to say, trying to make your populace not fire you (literally or through the voting booth) requires dialogues, genuine efforts in good times and bad. If you have a populace that's already feeling quite pissed off on the inside no matter what you say it won't make them feel that much better.
And really, using bad mathematics and shaky logic? My gosh. Try harder next time lah.
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ya, it is certainly important but if you ask sparrow, the person at the top do appreciate and recognize good honest and hard work AND do reward accordingly (even for someone who don't play the PR game like sparrow).
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