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Friday, January 30, 2004
Prime Suspect - D W
Prime Suspect - D W
What the wage reform means to the average peasant
(My first post here. Thanks to Dr. goat for the invitation.)It means:
(a) if your boss is happy, he will pay you your $300
(b) if your boss not happy you will have to make do with $700 (before CPF) which will be more than enough for 350 plates of char kway teow priced at $2 (excluding GST).
(c) the resident bootlickers in your place of employment will have a field day carrying your boss’ balls to ensure that they will have that extra 150 plates of char kway teow priced at $2 (excluding GST) to enjoy.
(d) setting aside money to have your own child has become next to impossible.
(e) the Singaporean dream of owning a car have just been upgraded to the “only when strike lottery” category.
(f) chances are you will keep your job, although whether this will help in the long run or how much more competitive we can be, no one knows.
Personal observations when reading the national rags on this:
(a) The spate of articles on this stressing on “employers, employers, employers”.
(b) The predictable but measured positive comments from employers, who may be rubbing their hands with glee that they now have a convenient excuse to screw the peasants under the banner of “poor performance”, which is usually subjective rather than objective.
(c) The surprisingly lack of quotes from the peasantry arising from this. Or maybe the rags are waiting for their mailboxes for the respective Forum pages to flood.
(d) The recommendations were derived from discussions with the manpower authorities, unions and private companies. I am curious as to how far the unions went in representing the interests of the common peasant.
(e) No concrete success stories on how this has positively impacted the bottom-line of a company and in one article, it seemed to suggest that they were still looking for one.
(f) No data or statistics to attempt a postulation on how far this recommendation can go in the grand or smaller scheme of things.
(g) In general, it feels like “we-don’t-know-why-we-do-but-we-just-have-to-do-this-since-it-sounds-spiffy”.
On the flip side, some would have read about how the Germans are going on a strike to ask for a 4% increase in pay.
