Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Tilt the balance in favor of local workers

Employers will continue to discriminate against local employees until the root causes are eliminated.

Here are the reasons why employers prefer foreigners.

1. They do not need to be called up for NS reservist duty or cannot claim for maternity benefit.
2. They do not need to contribute to CPF. Although employers have to pay a levy for certain categories of foreign workers, there is no levy on employment pass holders and dependent pass holders.
3. Foreign workers are willing to work for lower salaries and to work for long hours.
4. Foreign workers do not job hop.

To remove the discrimination against local employees, the following measures should be taken:

1. Stop call up for reservist duty. They can be called up for retraining at time of hostility.
2. All maternity benefit should be borne by the government and not the employee. The government can fund maternity benefit and retrenchment benefit through payroll tax of 1% of salaries (or less).
3. Implement a minimum wage that applies to local and foreign workers.
4 Give local employees and their employers the option to contribute a lower rate of CPF. Some local workers may want to use the money to rent a property rather than to buy a property.
5. Require employees to pay a levy for all categories of foreign workers, including employment and dependent pass holders.

These changes are likely to tilt the balance in favor of local workers.









1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Haha very true Mr Tan.

BUT .... very detrimental to the upper echelons of society including most in the PAP. Even the typical yuppies that PAP is cultivating will also be against it as they don't want drastic drops in their $2M condos or having no foreign PME's to rent their investment condos.

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