In all honesty, the Singapore Business Federation should be shut down.
From an employee point of view, the SBF have only succeeded in depressing our salaries in favor for cheap foreign employees. The SBF do not promote work-life balance to increase morale and better business productivity, they do not even speak up for more childcare benefits and this is the main reason why we have so low a birthrate.
The SBF is a clearly bane to employee benefits but they aren't any good for bosses too. Employers joined the business federation hoping the association could help push for business-friendly measures with the government. However, the SBF has done nothing except being a talking mouthpiece for the government. When businesses complained about high rentals, the SBF said nothing. When businesses are affected by the new Causeway tolls, the SBF is even more eerily silent.
Now when businesses faces manpower crunch, the SBF choose to flog a dead horse begging the government to not tighten the foreign worker quota. What use is the SBF for when it is just a paper tiger like our SAF generals?
If MNCs need to further their business interests in Singapore, we have the Economic Development Board who is in a position to negotiate tax breaks for them. If SMEs need to further their business interests, we have the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (ASMEs) to negotiate their terms on SME context. Every industry have their associations to represent their industrial interests like the Association of Banks Singapore to set guidelines and best practices. What use is the SBF for when its roles are undertaken by others?
The SBF was established in 2002, and going by track record, what have the SBF achieved? Zero contributions to the business modelling in Singapore. To make things worse, the SBF failed to identify the pitfalls of dangerous business practices like the exploitation of cheap foreign labor and also failing to sound off when productivity in Singapore were on a dangerous free fall trend from 2007 onwards.
If SBF is not mandated by law that businesses have to join them, would any business even bother?
Singapore is now overcrowded and the infrastructures are showing multiple breakdowns. The SBF however do not take these into considerations and chances are they do not care. The last Singapore need is more cheap foreign labour, we should shut the SBF for good before they promote more dangerous lobbying that will destroy Singapore's economy.
Alex Tan Zhixiang
TRS contributor