(17-06-2014, 11:50 AM)Riderr2000 Wrote: [ -> ] (17-06-2014, 08:19 AM)investor101 Wrote: [ -> ]From the development of the last few posts on this thread, I am surprised that a number of Singaporeans are still unaware that tourists can apply for jobs here, and that tourists can be direct competitors for jobs. I guess we all learnt something.
This is one reason why redundancies amongst Singaporeans in their late 30s and 40s are increasing, and why a growing number of Singaporeans are becoming taxi drivers while they still have about a good 15 years left in their PMET careers, if they were not made redundant.
Allowing any tourist to apply for S-Pass and E-Pass jobs allow the economy to keep its workforce perpetually young, but I wonder at what cost it is done for our own citizens?
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Take this as a wake up call. Your jobs are not secured. High chance of you being made redundant in your late 30s. It used to be from the 40s, now I think late 30s.
Source: http://www.tremeritus.com/2014/06/16/67-...old-above/
Better that you start early to invest and build up a viable source of alternative income to safeguard yourself.
I fully empathize with you, and I also share your concerns about being made redundant.
However I do not in general support a policy that is overly protectionistic - globalization is here to stay, and implementing policies that prevent the best suited person for the job just limits our long term potential.
I fully agree with your last comment that "Better that you start early to invest and build up a viable source of alternative income to safeguard yourself" - but I extend this to acquiring skills to remain employable. Wouldn't you rather have policies that help citizens remain employable through ensuring they are better than the foreigners, over simply preventing the onset of competition?
Bringing it back to the investment theme of this forum, I would want to own a business staffed by the best persons for the job, at a cost that the business can sustain, over a company that is hamstrung by policies preventing the employment of the best talent.
When someone is "made redundant" it either means that
(1) the business cant support that function, (2) the cost of the function is higher than the value that function brings, or (3) there is a better way of fulfilling that function. As a investor in a business, would we not expect our companies to make decisions thats good for the business, and not overpay for resources, including human resources? Assuming that there are policies that increases costs by 20% due to pensions, redundancies, overcapacity, inability to get rid of underperforming staff - how will these policies affect your decision to invest in that company.
Assuming then that we will invest in a company that is more competitive, how does that impact our views on preventing foreigners to compete for Singapore jobs?
In my view, the government should be taking care of its citizens - thats for sure - but not in a manner that impedes the ability of its businesses to compete in a highly competitive environment.
Here are my views:
Protectionism:
Every government has a legal and moral obligation to put its citizens first. That is what we elected a government for, and that is what it means to be a citizen. If citizens are not put first, then what is the point of even being a citizen, or doing National Service?
Putting citizens first is not just making political speeches. It is also about putting in effective and laws that are swift to step in when foreign managers make a deliberate effort to find fault and terminate citizen employees, so that he can replace citizen employees with his own nationality.
So far, I do not know of such laws are in place. If the foreign manager is determined to fire you, you are gone. The laws we have would at most help you get your severance pay.
Employability
Our current way of dealing with employability is to help retrenched PMETs find lower-paying jobs that do no match their expertise and skill-sets. Many are now working as security guards, taxi-drivers or trying their luck selling insurance.
Anaedoctal stories abound about foreign managers firing Singaporeans to bring in their own people.
No amount of training of employability will work, if the end game is to get citizens to accept the injustice of being fired simply because they are citizens [and therefore being more expensive or of the wrong nationality].
From what I see, employability is just a term to get citizens to accept the fact they are going to be terminated simply because they are citizens [which nearly by default, makes them more expensive and troublesome to hire - maternity leave or NS reservist issues].
I am okay with employability being about skills training to move employees up the ladder, not sideways or down the ladder.
Also, I am not sure why the foreigners are better than citizens. I have worked and traveled in a number of ASEAN and South Asian cities. Many of their schools there are poorly funded, overcrowded and they do not use any of the advanced teaching methods in Singapore. There are also much fewer tuition centres there. Universities in ASEAN and South Asia are also much less recognized for their quality as compared to NUS or NTU, or even against our younger universities such as SIM or SMU.
So, what are the odds that graduates from such universities or public schools in 3rd World countries equal or better than our own citizen graduates? That they are cheaper, able to work better with their own kind, or that as a whole, they are really better than Singaporeans?
Again, from anaedoctal stories, it seems the 'better' often just means cheaper or share the same nationality as the manager/director.