[redbean]

Is this a new kind of discrimination?

There have been complaints that employers discriminated against job applicants in their job advertisements by stating preferences for race, language or religion. This has incurred the wrath of the authorities and official statements have been made against such discriminatory practices. There have been promotional material and advertisements by NTUC to recruit employees based on merits alone.

Below is an extract of a Shin Min Daily article,

According to a Shin Min Daily report yesterday, a jobless Singaporean who went to a Bread Talk outlet for an walk-in interview was told by a Malaysian HR manager to back off:

“We don’t want to hire Singaporeans. We look after our own first.”

The Singaporean felt slighted and walked away in anger.

When contacted by the media, Bread Talk claimed that they hire more “locals” than foreigners and is currently “investigating” the matter.

It is not uncommon for HR managers who are foreigners to bring in their “own kind” at the exclusion of native Singaporeans,....

My god, how could this be true, Singaporeans being discriminated in their own country for employment. I hope the investigation proves that this is not the case. Singaporeans are the first choice for employment in Singapore. It cannot be otherwise. Please report to MOM if any company is practising discrimination against Singaporeans. The Ministry and NTUC will surely stand up to protect Singaporeans for jobs.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

A desperate plea from an honours local graduate

'...I sank into a mental depression and felt completely useless.

There was a period whereby I can’t even afford to have a proper $3 meal outside and had to feed myself with instant noodles and plain water every day.'

The above was from an article posted in Gilbert Goh's Transitioning.org. It is quite a long article by a local honours graduate who called himself Tan. He said he had just got an administrative job after 5 months of search, 11 months of door to door salesman, and another 4 months of search after he was retrenched from his first jobs of 3 months.

Tan was expected to be the sole breadwinner of his family but his jobless status had forced his parents to continue with their odd jobs just to carry on. And he was also settled with a study loan to pay. Without a job, without an income, he ended having to borrow to clear his debt.

This is the plight of some new graduates who are not lucky enough to have rich parents and could go on a long overseas holidays after graduating, and finding a job is secondary. Yes, some are not so fortunate.

When graduates of tertiary education was only 3% or 5%, a degree was a passport to a good life with jobs aplenty waiting for them. When 30% or 40% of each cohorts ended with a degree, the equation changes. A degree is just a degree and many applicants are also armed with degrees. It is not a guarantee that one can land a job so easily. Then we have the talented foreigners coming in to take a share of the jobs available, and there are the retrenched or jobless PMETs begging for a job as well.

Funny that this is a problem when technically we have full employment. Something is amissed. It will be a matter of time before our graduates start to drive taxis or be croupiers in the casinos, or as salesmen as saleswomen.

Please lower your expectation even if you are a graduate as you will hit one by throwing a stone into any crowd. I wonder how much the parents will have to pay to bring up a graduate. And I wonder how much will be needed for these young graduates to start a home, to buy their first 3 or 4 rm flats. Forget about anything bigger or private. Those must come from the pockets of rich parents.

Are we happy with the current situation? Are we doing it right or doing it wrong?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Can we afford to produce so many graduates?

We have three state universities and several local and joint universities in our little city. And each has been increasing their intakes of undergraduates rapidly. And we have several polytechnics as well. Then we also have students going abroad on scholarships or on their own to pursue that degree. In total, it is quite possible that 40-50% of each cohort will turn up with a degree and another 20-30% with a diploma.

Can our economy absorb all these graduates and keep them usefully and meaningfully employed with reasonable jobs and income commensurate with their qualifications? Employing graduates in jobs that do not require their level of education is not satisfactory and not a desirable solution. In order to accommodate all these graduates, there must be a policy change to make it workable. The liberal policies of welcoming foreigners that are no better or even less well educated or trained as our citizens must be modified.

If we are serious in wanting to raise the educational level and technical expertise of our citizens, we must have the capacity to absorb them into the system. The liberal policies of employing foreigners for middle executive levels and above need revision, including setting quotas for local versus foreigners. If the job market is to be lassez faire, the unfair competitiveness of foreign talents will only rule out the employment of local graduates and we will be building a little time bomb in the social fabrics of our society. There will be a political and social price to pay.

Answering to the demands and expectation of parents and individuals to want a tertiary education is one part of an equation. Satisfying their higher expectations in jobs and lifestyle is the other. The first part is being accomplished with the availability of more university and polytechnic places. Looks like the second part of the equation is still unsatisfactorily managed and will build up more stress in our system. The young and unemployed graduates and the displaced PMETs will be a force to be reckon with.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Punished for being self employed

Many of the oldies are fully retired and living on whatever they have left in their savings, plus whatever they could withdraw from their CPF. Some oldies refused to quit and wanted to continue working. Getting a job is out of question unless you are a super human bean and indispensable. They may even pay you millions to keep you employed, happily.

So the less talented and not so super human beans will try to be self employed. Some may sell things in pasar malam, some as agents of this and that, except secret agents, some may try driving taxis. Some may want to start a small biz. What they all wanted to do is to earn a living, post retirement.

What they did not bargain for is that by being self employed, they must pay protection money to the CPF in the form of medisave contribution. They don’t care whether you have any other insurance to cover your backside, they don’t care whether you can afford to pay this protection money. They just say you pay if you want to be in business. And they will tell you that it is for your own good.

What a ransom against the oldies who are trying to be independent and not drawing down on their little savings. What kind of business cost is this? Bloody shit! It is like being punished for trying to help yourself. And they are trying to help you by taking more money from you. Or are they making things more difficult for the oldies to want to be self reliant? If they sincerely want to help the oldies, self employed oldies should be exempted from contributing to Medisave to reduce their business cost.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

No more joblessness

The most happy piece of news today is that job applicants are turning down job offers and waiting for jobs that are paying more and with better benefits. It is now an employee's market and organisations looking for employees would have to pay more if they want to get a worker.

This shall be good news for the oldies as well. Those oldies who are still unemployed can go job hunting again. Just tell the employers that they don't mind being paid a little lesser than the yuppies.

I am going to find my resumes and try sending them out. Maybe I can land a job paying half a million if the incumbent is getting $1m. I can survive with half of that.

Gilbert Goh's blog on unemployment in Singapore is going to be history. Happy times are here again.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Work till death do us part

The new mantra, to work for as long as one is able, no retirement age, will take the Singapore employment scene by storm, that is, if it is implemented. And this is very likely so as the advocate is none other than LKY himself. What does this simple change in employment policy means? Colossal!

We will have more ancients staying in politics and govt till the end of time. Legislation will have to be changed. CPF will be obsolete. Lifestyle will change as 60 will now be the prime of one’s life and 20 to 30 years more to go. The young managers, in their 30s and 40s will have to make way or wait long long. The oldies will be making a comeback.

And we may not need a 6.5 million population after all. If everyone is employable and working, the workforce will not shrink so dramatically. And it really makes sense to our 25 to 30 year education system. Such a long education will be a complete waste of resources if the graduants only can work for 20 or 30 years. Now, with no retirement age, the productive years could be extended to 50 or 60 years.

I am all for it. Anyone want to employ me? Can take another 30 year mortgage! Wow, HDB flats repayable in 60 years, … cheap, cheap, cheap.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Work to live longer

LKY has said it and proven this to be true. He is a living example. Yesterday there was a letter to Today’s paper disputing this claim and quoting two research papers, one by Japanese Nobel Laureate Dr Leo Esaki and another by Dr Ephrem Cheng of the University of Alberta. Both papers pointed to people living longer if they retired earlier than later. The studies based on American workers in AT&T and Boeing, Lockheed and Lucent concluded that employees who retired at 65 died within two years of retirement. On the other hand those who retired at 50 or 55 could live up to 85.

Is there a contradiction or conflict in LKY’s position and those of the two academic. Actually no. What is important is that people who retire early should continue to work on a part time basis and ‘at a more leisurely pace, without the stress of the daily grind.’ And, ahem, that is what LKY is doing. He had retired from the premiership many years back and is working at a pace comfortable to him, without the stress of the daily grind.

For those who are going to continue to work and retire after 65, the study says they will die within two years after retirement. But there is a little hope. If they just stay on the job, they may live and work till the day they die, may be 80 or 85, provided the job is still there for them. The food court cleaners are the best example. They will live to a ripe age, working happily in the food court. But my experience in the food courts is that none of them appear happy. They are mostly grumpy, grouchy, hot temper and quarrelsome, anything but happy.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Case against minimum wage

This seems to be a hot issue in Parliament yesterday. And it is obvious that there will be one camp against one man. After hearing the reasons given, I am on the side of the camp. One dangerous principle of minimum wage is that an organization may be forced to pay some donkeys sitting there and not wanting to work. The examples brought up were short of hilarious. Workers did not want to work in kitchen because it is too hot. I have heard of cleaners complaining that their jobs were too tough, people find midnight shift intolerable. Basically complaints of all kinds about jobs.

May I then offer to aircon the kitchens, make all the jobs soft and cosy, no midnight shifts, or provide restaurant meals and gym membership to the workers to make working a pleasant past time?

Look at the other extremes, the politicians. Ask them to wake up at 5am to flag off a marathon, they will say yes. Ask them to go walkabout to shake every stranger’s hand, they will say yes. And they have full time job from 8 to 5. And in the evening they are everywhere, attending wakes and wedding dinners, community events, MPS, board meetings etc etc. By the time they got home they would have put in a 25 hour day work. And they are not complaining.

Some work so hard that they did not even have time to attend Parliament or have to force themselves to stay awake if they did attend. And their hairs are prematurely turning white. Poor buggers!

They are the best examples of exemplary work attitude. Never say no, never complain. Just work and work. Workers with such good attitude would not need to ask for minimum wage. The organizations will automatically pay them more.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

A second career in politics

Gilbert Goh has joined and left the Reform Party. Heard that he is now with another party. People like Gilbert, in fact there are many professionally trained and experienced people who have retired or in between jobs, should take up politics as a second career. The experience and wisdom they bring along after years of hard knocks will give them a more mature perspective of the expectation of life and what they can do for the people. And many of them are very able and could do much instead of waiting for another job.

A politician is a full time job, a career and a worthy one, and a worthwhile one as an occupation. What are they waiting for? Get together some like minded people, ten or twenty and that will be a good start and nucleus for a new political party. Joining an existing political party is easier but it means accepting all the culture and history and philosophy of that party.

Starting a clean slate with some people one knows better is more desirable and easier to move on without any old garbage. The young retirees are at the prime of their lives and have many more good years to go. What is there to lose when there is so much to gain?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

A new national problem

Worrying about the jobless yodas. Our oldies are going jobless, unemployed, unemployable. Serious problem! We need to find jobs for them. We need to restructure jobs, amend legislations, to let all the old fools to continue working, till they drop dead on their jobs.

What is happening? What have happened to the happily retired and living on a nest of life long savings? We are and were a nation of big savers. We save more than anyone else. What have happened to our savings?
Why must oldies keep on working to earn some money to live on? Crazy thought. What have gone wrong to our great retirement schemes and plans?

What happens to the golden years, to see the world, to enjoy the grandchildren, to be happily retired, lying on a rocking chair and reading a book or watching the sunset? Now it is like a big crisis to have all the oldies hanging around, jobless! They must have jobs, they must be working, so say all of us.

No more golden years? Soon golden age will also be passé.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

106,600 PMET jobs for Filipinos

This is how successful we are in job creation. And if you add the others, we could have created at least half a million PMET jobs for all the foreign talents here. It is indeed a great feat and something to crow about.

It is also a great feat that so many ex PMETs are now driving taxis or becoming agents or self employed, and struggling to make a living. Yes, we are an all inclusive country, including all foreigners as well. For those Singaporean PMETs who are still left in the lurch, it must be their own inept, that they could not compete with the foreign talents. Serve them right. And if they have a big mortgage to service and growing children that need to support, it must be their bad karma.

I do try to believe that it is all the faults of these ex PMETs for their own failures. Somehow I also have this niggering feeling that something is not right. Maybe 10%, statistically never wrong, to presume that there will be some that deserved to be in the shit hole. For the rest, I believe they are true Singaporeans at heart and are hard working and will be the ideal employees like all Singaporeans are, work and work and work.

It is sad that so many of our own PMETs have ended up in such a dire strait, and many in the prime of their lives. The option is to be retrained as service workers, and their valuable training, experience and expertise be dumped into the longkangs. There is no need for their skills as they can be replaced by cheaper and hungrier foreign talents.

Is there anything wrong about this state of affair?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Need for a major restructuring of the workforce

Singaporeans should be grateful that 106,600 PMET jobs are being taken up by the Filipinos. This is the same as the thousands of construction workers and maids doing jobs that Singaporeans did not want to do.
What Singaporeans should do is to retrain themselves for higher paying jobs. Not retraining PMETs to do lower level jobs. If this is the case, then someone’s ass need to be kicked.

There are plenty of high paying jobs in Singapore that Singaporeans should aspire to do. Those jobs that Singaporeans are no longer competitive, should go to foreign talents. We should welcome the Filipinos and the rest to be our PMETs.

Singaporeans can then seek jobs that these foreign talents cannot do and pay better. I am looking at Members of Parliaments, mayors, town council chiefs, President, or other political jobs. These are high paying jobs that Singaporeans should aspire to do. There may not be that many now but more can be created. We can have more MPs, more mayors, vice mayors, PMs, dep PMs, asst dep PMs, Presidents, Vice Presidents, and even Senior Presidents, or executive Presidents etc etc. And of course there are plenty of directors to be appointed in public and private companies.

Singaporeans are barking at the wrong tree to fight with cheaper foreign talents to be PMETs. There are better and higher paying jobs waiting for Singaporeans in govt and in politics.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Relying on cheap labour unsustainable

Eureka! Eureka! Singapore has finally discovered that relying on cheap foreign labour for economic growth is unsustainable. The govt is now advising the companies to change their business model to raise real productivity instead of just employing more and more cheap labour. The govt is doing the thinking again, to help the unthinking Singaporeans, this time to increase their productivity by other means.

This is good news or bad news? If companies are not going to import more foreign workers, will it affect our economic growth? What about the businesses that are dependent on foreign workers, like those in Geylang? I think it will also affect property prices and rentals.

Maybe not. I don’t think the spending power of cheap labour really help much to generate economic activities and growth. The only businesses they provide, other than in Geylang, will be public transport and loitering in the casinos and all the public parks. They would also provide more jobs for themselves as cleaners, to clean up the litters they left behind.

If lesser cheap workers are imported, the casino operators will be most happy, the local commuters will also be happy. Not sure if the public transport providers will be happy as the trains and buses will be less crowded and their revenue will be affected.

Singaporeans and Singaporean businesses will have to make adjustment to live with the presence of lesser cheap foreign workers.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

YES! Startups Scheme

I read about this scheme in the Sunday Times. YES stands for Youth Entrepreneurs Scheme. It is a scheme specially designed to help young people to start their own business, and many young entrepreneurs have done that. Started in 2008, the scheme has given grants to 72 applicants worth $3.5m.


To be eligible for the scheme the applicants must qualify under the following criteria,
• Singaporean/PR, below 26 years old. Parental consent must be sought for those applicants 18 years old and below on the date of application
• 1st time entrepreneur
• key driver in the company
This is a good scheme as it opens up another avenue to the young people instead of applying to become employees. It encourages entrepreneurship, self employment and risk taking.

In view of the healthy pool of retirees that are unwanted as employees, and with the understanding that they have another 15 or 20 more years of living to get by, it may be opportune for Spring Singapore to consider setting up a similar scheme for the oldies who still need to earn a living or who may want to try out something new in the new phase of their lives. Life does not end after 55 or after retirement. A new pool of manpower that is self employed and not dependent on applying for jobs and would not stress up the job market.

The above criteria may have to be amended to suit the background and experience of the oldies. There are more and more of them coming into the workforce but only to hit the great wall of corporate Singapore that sees nothing good except youth. YES, youth is what living is all about. How about a little thought for the oldies, the yodas? Have another version of YES, Yoda Enterpreneurs Scheme, for the ‘has beens’ may be timely given the govt’s push for the oldies to be independent, resourceful and be useful to themselves and society.

There are many campaigns to teach the oldies how to keep themselves alive and active, but unproductive. They are still dependent on their CPF and savings to carry on. Boon Heng may have slipped his mind on how to make the oldies young entrepreneurs again and live life to the fullest, and be useful and creative again. Just make sure they don’t indulge in it in the biological sense.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

The most lucrative part time job

Anyone looking for a part time job will be resigned to the fact that it comes with no job security and a paltry allowance. But this is not true in the uniquely Singapore context. The part time job of a Member of Parliament comes not only with job security for 4 years, could be a life time, and with a handsome allowance which many CEOs may not even smell. This part time job offers an allowance of more than S$13k per month, with a 13th month bonus, with a productivity bonus or maybe 3 to 4 mths and with a GDP bonus that is 8 months for this year. All in all the total bonus could be something like 12 to 15 mths. Not bad really, for a part time job. And the perks of being appointed as directors or chairman of public listed companies and public companies….Really bee tang.

The next best job is a full time job that some may reckon as a vacation in a palace. But this is not true as it comes with really heavy responsibilities. Anyway, it pays S$4m a year plus all the perks of a presidency and, yes, the same number of months of bonuses as an MP. The total payout for year 2011 could be more than S$8m!

Where on earth can one find such lucrative part time and full time jobs?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.