Lucky Tan writes about the need for a fairer distribution of wages. His story about the public transport strike in Los Angeles is insightful. The commuters of LA supports the demand of bus drivers for higher wages, as they are part of the community. We need to emulate the American's concern for their fellow men, rather than adopt the Singaporean attitude of being self-centered. http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2012/04/our-income-gap-reflects-power.html
It is not only at the "bottom"...the cumulative effect is a "depression" up the middle-income band for many technical / mid-managerial jobs too.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is very bad in certain industries. Construction is one of them. You can see developers making hell alot of lot of money out of the property sales. Govt make alot money thru' land sales...
Local cheap labour is now almost extinct, replaced by cheap foreign labour. When you cannot cut at the bottom any more, cut those at the middle too. And the higher technical jobs are affected too up the value chain, e.g. due to lower paid Filipino, Myanmar, Indian, China etc working at mid-level jobs. It does not matter they could not perform ... This is also where a lot of producvitity is lost.
You employ because they are cheap and not they are technically competent enough. Wages get depressed. Jobs demanding proper qualifications and project experiences get marginalised ... when productivity then drops, and wages is lower...you then say productivity must go up first before you increase wage?????
NTUC etc had been this playing this broken record/cassette tape year-in-year-out. But now we are a nation playing with i-Phones. LOL...iPod is out too.
Prof Lim C Y had been recommending NWC for many years...and now wages still so low? The basics explain, and he now also gave up due to Age; just like workers' motivation. LOL.
I used to joke, when NWC recommended every year, only the Govt sector follows but not the private sector ...