SDP's May Day message 2010

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Singapore Democrats

Yet again May Day, dedicated to workers throughout the world, is knocking on our doors but without any ray of hope for our hapless workers - exploited and oppressed by the PAP Government.

After more than 50 years of rule by the PAP that came to power in 1959 riding on the back of a then powerful labour movement, the workers have been systematically reduced to mere digits without dignity and tenure of employment.

This is because the ruling party was then waving its socialist credentials but which has since morphed into an authoritarian capitalist outfit.

There are close to three million workers out of a population of nearly five million in Singapore. In other words the vast majority of us are wage earners or dependent on salaries to maintain a decent standard of living.

There’s no protection of employment, let alone dignity of labour for our workers. Their basic rights are trampled underfoot by decades-old “labour laws” introduced in the late 1960s by the Government to deprive our workers of any voice.

Our workers are denied the right to form independent trade unions to safeguard their rights such as minimum wage, retrenchment entitlements, and job security threatened by the unchecked inflow of foreigners.

Although there is what the Government calls the National Trades Union Congress headed by a cabinet minister and claiming to represent our workers, it is simply a sham organization, a mere appendage of the PAP to check and frustrate the aspirations and expectations of the overwhelming majority of our workers.

In Singapore, which the PAP claims has reached First World status under its uninterrupted half-a-century rule, workers are at the mercy of employers. But this exploitative bind that has turned our workers into cannon fodder for foreign MNCs and government-and-Temasek-linked companies has to be changed.

The SDP has been calling for the formation of independent trade unions to genuinely look after the interests of our workers, just as the employers, including foreign multi-nationals, are allowed to form their own councils and federations to protect their sectarian needs.

We want to see a minimum wage law enacted, a Singaporean First policy in place, weekly working hours respected, and rampant exploitative practice of contract labour curtailed.

Of course, we can’t expect change to take place under the PAP rule. All that we hear from its ministers and the NTUC is the silly rhetoric to “upturn the downturn”. What this means is that Singaporean workers have to continue supporting PAP’s economic fundamentals of relying on the crisis-ridden US economy to recover.

But the SDP is proposing an alternative economic programme that advocates a sustainable approach to development - one that is aimed at transforming the country into a creative, innovative and confident society, a society that can hold high its head, moving ahead into the 21st century.

As we mark this May Day, let us work towards a paradigm shift in the economic, political and social spheres long dominated by the authoritarian PAP.

The SDP wishes all our workers, their families and friends a Happy May Day for a better and brighter future.

Gandhi Ambalam
Chairman
Singapore Democratic Party

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Comments (10)

Fri 30 Apr 2010 4:27 AM | orange

Labour Day should not just be a rest day for Singaporeans but a day to think of how to improve their rights as workers.

On the NTUC page, we see them claiming "NTUC is a national confederation of 60 unions and 6 associations with over 500,000 members in support of the Labour Movement."

What Labour Movement are we talking about? The movement to lost the Unuins down into the website and calling that a movement? They should call this a May's Fool Day.

What kind of rights is the NTUC fighting for workers when the chief and Minister of Parliament Lim Swee Say tells workers to be "cheaper, better, faster?"

This is the same minister who made a recent remark saying that he is deaf to all criticism, just like the PAP.

Fri 30 Apr 2010 5:18 AM | Buwakasha - PAP ultra right (fascist), SDP ultra left (sociali

I strongly support the SDP for its earnest opposition to the status quo. In my life, I've the opportunity to vote only once and I voted for the SDP. However, my support for the SDP is mainly to voice my opposition to some of the PAP's policies. I can't in good conscience vote for the SDP because I do not believe in the SDP's alternative. I'm very much against the PAP ultra right fascist positions but I'm also against the SDP ultra left solutions. Maybe some of you here can convince me otherwise.

"There’s no protection of employment"

The SDP implies that somehow employment has to be protected by some kind of government authority, ie have big brother government take care of workers. I believe that there should be no protection of employment, instead there should be protection of freedom. Both employers and employees should have the same rights, just because there are more employees than employers does not mean the employees gets more rights over employers. The minority should be treated equally against the majority, just like minority races should not be discriminated against. The PAP government have policies that favours some employers, especially MNCs and GLCs but the solution is not to push to the other extreme by favoring employees over employers.

"denied the right to form independent trade unions"
"minimum wage"
"retrenchment entitlements"

All these policies that the SDP suggest merely destroys employment opportunities. Yes, I agree we should have the right to form trade unions, but we shouldn't be forced to. In the US, people are forced to join the unions, there's no choice not to. Once you join the union, you have to pay union fees which is an added tax. Unions prevents employers from hiring people, because they have to be very careful and if they hire the wrong people, they cannot fire them. Unions also prevent your salary from increasing because everyone has to be paid equally, yes that's right, with unions you can throw performance bonuses out of the window. Of course, you can argue that there might be a better trade union model than the US. I will support legislation that allows the formation of unions provided people are not forced by the government to join the unions.

I've voiced my view on minimum wage before. Again, it sounds nice, but all it does is discriminate against low income, low skilled individuals and benefits the higher income, higher skilled individuals. Notice that most lobbyist for minimum wage are not individuals who earn the minimum wage. Most people strongly arguing for minimum wage laws are people earning more than the minimum wage, much more. Minimum wage laws does not accomplish anything. Productivity and prosperity cannot be legislated by a stroke of a pen, it has to be achieved by hard work and sacrifice (savings). Otherwise as I said before, all we have to do is have a minimum wage law of $1,000,000 a month and we will all be very rich.

"retrenchment entitlements"

Again, all this does is to limit who employers can hire. Retrenchment entitlements, healthcare entitlements, retirement entitlements, housing entitlements, etc, all these entitlements by mandate merely forces the price of labour to go up. By writing such laws and forcing employers to give employees all these benefits merely forces employers not to hire anybody. These entitlement benefits have the same effect as minimum wage laws. You do not protect workers by writing laws. Workers are protected by the freedom to quit their jobs and work for another employer.

If you step back and take a look, workers are on their own right businesses too. They are offering their service, their labour to the highest bidder in the market. Workers are like landlords, ie you own a property (your labour) and employers are like tenants. When your employer employs you, its like you renting your property to your tenant. The tenant pays you rent (your salary). What would happen if the government comes in and demand that all property owners provide retrenchment benefits, healthcare benefits, etc to their tenants? What would happen would be a net reduction of demand for renting these property and therefore a net increase in the amount of property that cannot be rented out (unemployment). No, these laws do not help one bit, they sound nice, but in reality, they do not work.

"job security threatened by the unchecked inflow of foreigners"

I agree that we should not have unchecked inflow of foreigners. I have said many times, local born Singaporeans are 2nd class citizens. However, job security is not one of the reasons that I'm against the policy. I don't want job security, I want opportunities. I don't want to be a slave (slaves have job security but no opportunities), maybe a minority of people would but the majority of Singaporeans would not. We are leaving the country for better opportunities abroad.

Fri 30 Apr 2010 10:47 AM | Seelan Palay - Are Democratic parties worldwide also "ultraleft"?

Dear Buwakasha, you pointed out 3 factors:

"denied the right to form independent trade unions"
"minimum wage"
"retrenchment entitlements"

Are these points to equate SDP as being "ultra leftist"? In that case, most of the democratic parties around the world would be "ultra leftist" too. In that case, the entire socio-political system in the US is "ultra leftist" too.

Fri 30 Apr 2010 12:48 PM | quantum

or Buwakasha is ultra-right? It is all relative.

Fri 30 Apr 2010 2:10 PM | Tan Tai Wei

In the eighties, seven of us had been elected by the Staff Association of our Statutory Estabishment to form the protem committee of an union the Association had wanted to convert into. The capplication to form the union was on the verge of being decided by the Registrar of Societies when a change of Minister occurred.

He disapproved of the union and sent his "Director" of that Ministry to "advise" us twice to withdraw our application to the Registrar. Each time he came, we met the staff we represented in "emergency general meetings", but who voted that we should not withdraw.

And the protem committee felt that the case for having the union waa intact, moreover if the Government felt otherwise, they could instuct their Registrar not to approve, instead of wanting us to withdraw of our own accord.

The next thing that happened was that the seven of us were being accused of "insubordination", and letters asking for our resignation were about to be sent.

Luckily for us seven, the then Minister of State (who was a committed evangelical Christian) to that Minister agreed to the request by the CEO of our Establishment to give her seven days to defuse the issue.

So,we had no choice but to withdraw. I wrote to the Registrar that "owing to an unexpected turn of events, we have to withdraw our application", and I was mildly surprised that our CEO approved the letter of withdrawal.

(We had indications after that that ISD spent a whole Saturday morning investigating us seven. I had just moved house, and the CEO, who were not yet informed of my new address, phoned several of my colleagues late that morning, after I had gone home, to get the address.)

Interestingly, the father of a present Minister in Government was one of the seven in our protem committee. Had he also lost his job, we would not have this promising minister in the Cabinet today. He was still at secondary school then, and his father would hsve lost his means to give him the education he needed to be where he is today!

Fri 30 Apr 2010 5:43 PM | seebeng - Workers too have rights

The stark reality under PAP is while the employers have been given full freedom to organise themselves into federations, chambers of commerce and business councils to look after their interests, the workers are left high and dry with nothing except the NTUC which is a bogus organisation.

Employers come with capital and the workers their labour. Capital alone cannot produce goods, services, etc. A major element called labour is needed by capital to manufacture goods for sale in the market.

While capital is protected through incentives such as tax holidays, reduced corporate tax, etc., the labour is prevented from organising itself. The PAP government, as agents of capital, is against labour forming itself into independent trade unions that could genuinely safeguard itself from ruthless exploitation and oppression by employers.

Workers too have, just as the employers, the inalienable right to organise themselves to ensure that they are not exploited by predatory capitalists. But in Singapore, while workers are left to the mercy of their employers by anti-labour laws, the PAP government aids them to intensify the exploitation by allowing unfettered inflow of foreign labour.

The duty of any government is to attract and bring in industries and other economic activities that could provide jobs to its citizens. But the PAP government is encouraging labour intensive foreign MNCs and big businesses that are here to offer jobs to foreign cheap labour so that the GDP growth could be impressive, leading to PAP ministers’ humongous salaries, including the so-called labour chief.

Fri 30 Apr 2010 10:39 PM | Nirdosh Kutty - Labour Rights

Long time reader, first time commentor. The article above, implies that the SDP would allow such rights if they were in power.

Is that the case? Surely a certain level of pragmatism would be required after all the Singapore economy is totally dependent upon its labour.

I live in the UK and we are on the verge of a General Election with the Tories releasing a 'Contract' with the nation - nobody believes them as they know that once in power, such contracts are ignored.

Sat 01 May 2010 2:30 AM | quantum

You want the workers to unite? They tried in 1987 and were arrested under ISA as Marxists conspirators.
Now workers spent most of the time fighting amongst themselves instead.

Sat 01 May 2010 11:51 AM | seebeng - Workers denied their basic rights

To Nirdosh Kutty,

You say you live in the UK but are you a citizen having the right to vote there? Notwithstanding, the Tories represent corporate interests and naturally when they talk about "Contract with the nation" it is something else.

To quantum,

The so-called Marxist conspirators were social and church workers, trying to do some good for the disadvantaged.

The fact in Singapore is workers are not allowed to form independent trade unions. Only through unions workers can unite and fight for their just rights such as minimum wage, retrenchment benefits and so on.

How can they fight among themselves when they are not allowed to come together in the first place?

Sat 01 May 2010 5:52 PM | quantum

They are together everyday as taxi drivers, bus drivers, coffee shop cleaners, odd jobs laborers, factory workers, prostitutes etc. Most of the violence and crimes are conducted by them to themselves.
That is the reason why chickens have their beaks cut off. With all the chickens all cramped into a little space by the farmer who want only profits, the chicken become violent to themselves.