Singapore has one of the highest income inequality rates in the world. The wages of the poor have not increased in material terms and the cost of living continues to escalate. Poverty is the outcome of injustice and exploitation. It can be an incredibly disempowering experience. When your dignity is trampled on, you suffer in silence, you suffer in desperation and you suffer in isolation. You may not dare to speak up and make yourself heard because you feel it is shameful, and you don’t want your relatives and your friends to know the difficulties and suffering you are experiencing.
In Singapore there are many families and individuals who are struggling just to make ends meet. Many of them don’t need handouts, and what they most certainly don’t need is our charity. What they need is a decent wage, decent working hoursand working conditions. But not only do we continue to have policies which keep them poor, but worse still, we continue to blame them for their poverty.
The poor are constantly told, and shamefully enough, by their unions that they are lazy, unproductive, and that they need to buck up if they want higher and better wages. Our low wage workers, whether they are cleaners, gardeners, security guards, or car park attendants may earn as little as $600 a month. They have to work shifts, have irregular days off, and clock in between 12 to 16 hours a day. Many of them have to hold two jobs just to make ends meet. They may not have CPF or medical benefits. Some may have illnesses and are saddled with huge medical bills. Many of them are afraid of creating trouble for fear of losing their jobs. How do you tell workers in such situations to 'upgrade' and be more 'productive'?
Our local workers will continue to be poor, and will continue to be exploited as long as we continue recruiting hundreds of thousands of low wage migrant workers to replace them. As a social worker who works on migrant labour issues, I have seen Bangladeshi workers who work in our shipyards for wages as low as $1.50 per hour. How are our local workers ever able to compete on such wages? These men from the poverty stricken countries of Bangladesh and India may pay up to $9000 to recruiters in their countries of origin just for the opportunity of a better life here. I have seen men who become injured at work, suffer from debilitating injuries and accidents while building our MRT stations, our schools and our homes.
I have seen how some employers refuse to house them, refuse to provide food and medical attention when they
are injured. Once they have become a liability, they are ignored and discarded. I have also seen many employers resort to hiring men from security companies with gangster like behaviour who assault and force these women and men who have been exploited to leave the country, even though they may not have earned money to pay their debts or have valid claims which the employer refuses to let them lodge.
I have seen women and men working as cleaners, kitchen assistants, waiters, waitresses labouring up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. In the most unfortunate cases, they are victims of human trafficking and are deceived into jobs and working conditions that they did not expect and they are afraid of speaking up. With such miserable working conditions for migrant workers, how can we expect locals to take up such jobs and compete with them?
Our local PMETs are also being displaced because employers prefer to hire foreigners who do not mind being paid less and working longer hours. Their salaries are not high enough to cope with the cost of living, and when they are unfairly dismissed, or retrenched they have limited means to seek redress nor do they have unemployment benefits and insurance to help them cope with their difficulties.
Human rights are indivisible and the equality of persons is a principle in which our society was built upon. We should not tolerate inequality and exploitation whether it affects women or men, the young and the old, the disabled or the able bodied, homosexual or heterosexual, Singaporean or migrant. Instead of drawing false dichotomies, a more sustainable, and inclusive approach is ensuring that the structures and policies which result in disadvantaging everyone are changed.
Therefore, when we have measures which aim to 'sharpen the distinction' between Singaporeans and foreigners, as PM Lee puts it, it creates a false divide as if the blame lies with foreigners, and not with our immigration policies. At its worst, policies which supposedly put Singaporeans above foreigners create an illusion of citizenship entitlement among us Singaporeans when in actual fact, no substantial change has happened because the real issues of inequality, exploitation and social injustice are still not addressed.
The increase in school fees for PRs for basic education is one example and the withdrawal of subsidies for health care for migrant workers is another. We should not be fooled by such measures. How does making health care and education more expensive for migrants help us cope with depressed wages and lost jobs? How does that ease the transport squeeze? How does that give us better quality health care?
All the problems that have been unleashed, such as locals getting displaced from their jobs, overcrowded transportation, depressed wages, and inadequate hospital beds, are due to the fact that we have an overly liberal immigration policy, inadequate social protection and weak labour laws.
We need to calibrate our immigration policy such that it does not affect the quality of life of Singaporeans, close the income gap and extend social welfare to all who are disadvantaged and need it. But we cannot achieve this through discrimination and drawing false distinctions because giving foreigners fewer benefits, fewer subsidies and fewer concessions isn't necessarily going to make life better for us Singaporeans. We need to have anti-discrimination laws so that anyone who has been unfairly treated whether it is by nationality, gender identity, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation or disability can have avenues to seek redress.
In the nineteenth century in America, workers took to the streets and starting striking on the issue of long working hours. Many workers were labouring 14 to 16 hours a day and they had had enough. Over the decades, tens of thousands of them and their families began to talk about acting in solidarity to pressurise employers to reduce work hours. The unions and workers knew that if they stood together in their workplaces, in their communities and in their homes in support of one another, it would bring about change. By May 1886, 3,500 strikes took place throughout the U.S. and some in Canada demanding better working conditions and shorter hours.
In July 1889, the International Labour Congress met in Paris. Labour groups from around the world came to discuss workers` issues. At this conference they passed a resolution to declare May 1 as International Labour Day in support of the 8-Hour day struggle in North America. This is the story of labour day.
Many of the rights that we take for granted now, such as public holidays, weekends off, medical benefits, paid annual leave, and sick leave were a result of trade union and worker struggles. When these struggles were taking place, the workers were united in achieving justice and equality for all; they recognised that their problems and difficulties were shared by everyone, regardless of social class or national origin.
I would like to end by thanking Nizam, who resigned from the Board of the Association of Muslim Professionals for his courage for standing up to the State when it accused him of engaging in race-based politics. I would also like to thank him for exposing how the government continues to intimidate civil society through threats of funding cuts and accusations of so-called ‘political agendas’. We should not have to tolerate the government’s oppression simply because we organise our communities and choose to publicly express our dissatisfactions.
We need to target power, and the State for refusing to relinquish its power to us. What Nizam has done is truly inspirational. Singapore needs a vibrant civil society so that we can build an inclusivesociety together which respects the rights and dignity of everyone. This cannot be achieved if we continue to let those in power push us around. Your presence here today is a symbol of our collective resistance, and I thank you for being here.
Happy Labour day.
*Article first appeared on https://www.facebook.com/notes/jolovan-wham/the-population-white-paper-i...