Monday, August 02, 2010

Productivity and exploitation of workers

Read this article.

My view
I agree with the writer that higher productivity should lead to higher standard of living, instead of putting more people out of work. The exploitation of workers has led to a widening gap between the top incomes and the majority of lowly paid workers. This also measured by the GINI coefficient, of which Singapore has fared badly, and is worse than America.

5 comments:

Chee Ming said...

Companies in Singapore is still hiring, just that they are not hiring Singaporeans.

Createwealth8888 said...

Maintaining or reducing costs at higher productivity will drive higher profits. Higher profits mean higher performance bonus for those in the Management layers.

To drive higher performance bonus, Management layers will have to drive the Working layers into higher productivity.

The gap between top incomes between the mass majority of the Working layers in any organisation can only widen further.

If Govt is not actively looking at it , no one else can stop the widening gap.

Tan Kin Lian said...

My friend, who run a small company, shared this story with me. He hired a Singaporean and had to pay CPF, which is not required for a foreign worker. So, the Singaporean worker, who is a graduate, cost more.

The Singaporean was quite apologetic in telling the boss, "I have three weeks of reservist training in November". It was a few months ago, but he had to tell the employer as the employer has to find someone to cover the daily work while the employer went on reservist training. For a small company, this can be disruptive. The company is struggling to keep afloat, so this type of disruption is not helpful.

This are regular occurrences that have to be faced. They cannot be swept under the carpet.

C H Yak said...

Q
In many cases, bosses told panicked workers who were still on the job that they had to take pay cuts or cuts in hours, or both. And raises were out of the question. The staggering job losses and stagnant wages are central reasons why any real recovery has been so difficult.

“They threw out far more workers and hours than they lost output,” said Professor Sum. “Here’s what happened: At the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, you see corporate profits begin to really take off, and they grow by the time you get to the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion. And over that same time period, wage and salary payments go down by $122 billion.”

That kind of disconnect, said Mr. Sum, had never been seen before in all the decades since World War II.

UQ.

Precisely, this was the case in S'pore when CPF was also cut compulsorily across the board and wage was re-structured. It not only affect the low wage workers but also the middle income earners. Personally, I felt it strongly in the private sector.

Not only, low wage workers are displaced, but now PMETs also get retrenched.

And "coincidentally" as we see it, it is also a situation when Foreign Talents are employed at lower salaries that locals felt marginalised.

The situation becomes more complex when they are forced into "home-ownership"...and at ridiculously rising HDB prices...other rising costs aside...and the GOVT refused to achowledge such a situation for political reasons.

C H Yak said...

Q
SINGAPORE has yet to adopt Japan's productivity culture, but can make up for it in other ways, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said on Wednesday.

Two key elements to this culture are still alien to Singaporeans, he said at a dialogue with participants at a Singapore National Employers Federation summit.

First, Japanese workers start at the bottom rung and therefore understand the workings of a company at every level. In Singapore, by contrast, 'if you send someone down to the factory floor, he feels demeaned,' said MM Lee.

Second, Japanese workers cooperate and feel a bond towards the company. They stand in for sick colleagues and, back in the days of lifetime employment, they tied their future to the company's.

MM Lee was inspired by the Japanese to launch Singapore's first productivity drive in the 1980s and even took them on as consultants. But it is still a work in progress.

'We've been trying ever since,' he said. 'Can (we) equal the Japanese? Very unlikely. Can we be competent? Yes. But we don't have the culture.'
UQ

There is no consistency in policies. When they want productivity, they cry must follow Japanese - long term employment & loyalty.

When economy is bad, they say cut wages , no life-time employment, cut CPF and retrenchment as usual by employers, even without retrenchment benefits. They say wage must be re-structured and firms must out-source to sustain business, etc.

Hence, how to build up productivity culture and trust? The NTUC boosted to ILO about tri-partite trust ... I think it is only between the leaders of the 3 bodies [NTUC, SNEF and GOVT (MOM)]...on the ground where got trust?

If no trust, where got "productivity culture". All these double standards talking by our Govt is useless.

I agree with the article - there is "DISCONNECT".

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