Hi Egghead, I have to agree with you that many Singaporeans have this sort of perception.
Personally I think this sort of perception formed throughout the years in Singapore because of the lack of respect we give to such hard working individuals. The lack of respect came about partly due to the wages these individuals earn.
To a typical Singaporeans, a more respectable person is a person who can earn big bucks by being anyone of the individuals you mentioned below. Unfortunately, this is just how the government has shaped Singaporeans to be. Such perceptions in a society is unhealthy. Individuals should be respected as indviduals and not by what jobs they hold or how much money they earn.
Luckily, perceptions can be changed. Hence, in my own opinion, I think we can start doing this by raising the wages of such jobs. In time to come, we will learn to respect such jobs.
(20-03-2013, 09:02 AM)egghead Wrote: [ -> ]Let me offer my view of this. I feel that the entire Singapore society has a certain bias towards certain jobs due to decades of social conditioning. From young, we are told to study hard, get good school, good university so as to get a "good job" meaning lawyer, doctors, accountant, etc. This thinking is already hard wired into our mind. Mind you, this is not just happening in Singapore. In China, you hear and read about graduates who would rather be jobless than take up blue collar jobs due to this conditioning.
IMO, I think you are partially right.
On the other hand, I think that the shortage of labour is because private developers are refusing to upgrade their equipments. Let me try to draw a parallel here with computers.
In the old days when there was the 14.4k modem, it will be unthinkable how long it will take to download ten 3mb songs with one modem and one computer.
To speed things up I have two options:
A) I can buy ten cheap computers, ten cheap 14.4k modems, and hire ten cheap workers to hasten my downloads.
OR
B) Buy a higher end computer with Fibreoptics internet connection. That way, I can still download ten 3mb songs but all I have to do is rely on one worker.
It is the same in the contruction industry. Developers are not upgrading their equipments. That is why they still need so many cheap FWs.
(20-03-2013, 09:05 AM)zhangwuji Wrote: [ -> ]Shortage of construction worker? Singaporean have been shunt construction industry since the seventies. And HDB hand been able to deliver in reasonable in the passed. At one stage, we even had excess of up to 20000 units when LHK was in charge. When MBT took over, he even had to engage the help of property agents to clear the stocks.
One of the reasons that I can think of for the current labour shortage in the construction industry is due to the fact that our gov. has been releasing more and more plots of land for private developers over the passed few years at the expenses of land plots that are supposed to be allocated for HDB. Developers are now more busy than ever to build and launch condo. projects every week. We never had so many of private estate development projects in such short time span in our history before. How can we expect to get enough workers for HDB when they are all prioritized with the private developments. So labour shortage is just an excuse. Just stop releasing land plot for private development for a year or two and you can see if the workers will come back for HDB or not.