Saturday, August 20, 2011

Maid is going to be increasingly unaffordable

The cornerstone policy that enables our woman to pursue career is the cheap availability of maid. Right now, as PAP embark the road of debauching Singapore dollar, depressing working class income, we are starting to have difficulties in hiring maid.

There is a article in Lianhe Zaobao (联合早报) pointing out that for the maid,
  • monthly wage in Canada is S$1600. 
  • month wage in Norway is S$1200, with fringe benefits like 5-6 hours of work per day and OT pay.
  • monthly wage in Hong Kong and Taiwan is S$800. 
Ridiculously, the maid wage level elsewhere is even greater than our cleaners and manual workers. With such wages differences and premium over the salary in Singapore, we are having hard times getting "talent" maid now. And as minimum salary keep rising within our neighbour's workforce, we are going to run out of maid in the not so far away future, unless we adjust upward their salary.

PAP has been forcing our woman to work using policy levers including asset inflation. The extra workforces generated lots of wealth for the corrupt PAP. Without maid, either there will be a reduction of female workforce causing asset price to plunge due to reduced family income -- or sterilizes Singaporean further as couples are forced not to have babies.

Eventually, I think we may have to pay higher for maid, and that still in turns cuts into fertility rate and contributes to rising cost of living.

Raising our wages to pay for maid? This is completely anathema to the PAP gangs in pursue of enslavement. What about sourcing maid from Somalia, Afghanistan,...etc when no one wants to accept the offer here because of low salary? With all options running out, the future of Singapore appears increasingly despair each day. 

其中一家女佣机构Kababayan Far East的经理沙玛勒说,到加拿大工作,女佣每个月能赚取1320元加币(约1600元新币),是本地薪水的三、四倍。此外,每天工作8小时,如果超时工作,雇主需要支付额外薪金,外加一周休息两天。
......


公司人事经理伊玛说,挪威帮佣每月的薪水约新币1200元,每天只需工作5、6个小时,且能领取超时费。申请到那里工作的准证只需要4个月,但是当地政府只允许女佣最长工作两年。


薪酬福利的原因,不仅使得在本地工作的女佣希望转介到欧美国家去工作,香港和台湾也是热门地区,两地的薪金约为每月800元。

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

importing low-cost labour was never going to be a long term solution - on contrary, the govt of singapore has chosen to copy its western (esp US and UK) idols by importing low-cost workers to keep zombie companies alive, at the urging of the SNEF. It prevents more efficient companies from thriving, GLCs to outbid the smaller more nimble players. I know of numerous smaller precision machining companies locally who closed down, because the GLCs like ST, SIA, Keppel, instead of subcontracting out, hired cheap chinese labour to avoid a massive fall in topline. Instead of following the Germans and Swiss in building a thick SME sector, the Singapore govt killed them, preferring the one stone two birds stategy: FT keeps GLCs alive and the GDP high and keeps lining their own pockets with the GDP bonuses. But here is the mortal fallacy of this "FT" debate - China and India are themselves running out of cheap labour, their currencies are appreciating and their companies are forced to adapt faster than those protected fat cats in Singapore. They have to find orders yet retain their best workers and managers at home and stay competitive globally. They are doing what the Koreans and Taiwanese are all doing, improve productivity with existing workers, move up value-chain. India is no more the software sweatshop, nor will China remain the knock-off hub in 5 years time. The top senior civil servants are even worse than I thought they were, strategically blind, overpaid and mentally challenged.

Veritas said...

Re August 20, 2011 5:38 PM

We are now trapped inside the toxic system created by Goh Keng Swee. MNC are here to do wage arbitration. In a MNC driven economy, PAP got to import FT to keep wage low.

I agree 100% your opinion your opinion on GLC.