Singapore Islands' most valuable commodity, an ignorant, cheap and submissive labor force

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In Lee Kuan Yew's tiny island tin pot dictatorship there has not been a single worker strike for the last 30 years, except for one surprisingly by Chinese migrant low wage bus drivers which expectedly didn't get anywhere. Five of them were charged criminally, one was sentenced to 6 weeks jail, the other four are waiting in jail for their sentence and 26 were deported to Communist China.

In Singapore Island, there are no minimum wage laws which means you can pay a worker $2 a day if you like, labor unions are managed by the government which protect employer's interests rather than the other way round, workers have no way to further their interests under the law, and the ethos in the labor market is simply, take it or leave it.

Throughout the island's state controlled newspapers the past few days (there is no independent press) the government has repeatedly referred to the strikers as having destroyed Singapore’s world famous "industrial harmony" by going on strike.

So in effect Singapore is selling to the world a cheap, conformist, ignorant workforce, by telling them Singapore is a marvelous place for investment, since they cannot complain even if you paid them pittance. Singapore is also telling the world that it it's citizens and workers are simply dumb and a bunch of spiritless, gutless people who, like robots, will obey their masters without complaint.

Therefore, it is telling global companies that with this totally submissive workforce, they could make tons out of their backs.  

Selling such a slavish workforce does not speak well of the employers who take advantage of them and neither does it speak well of the workers for being shamefully spineless and willing.

In Singapore Island, you end up with an unscrupulous bunch of employers who take advantage of helpless union-less workers and a disgraceful bunch of workers who allow themselves to be willingly abused this way. Not an honorable way to sell a country or to make a living, either by employers or workers.

Gopalan Nair
A Singaporean by birth in Exile
Attorney at Law
Fremont, California
Tel: 510 491 4375