See to It that Your Workers Can Live So That Your Customers Can

I have a new morning routine with the wife. I sit at my computer dealing with the day’s activities, while she learns English from a “Zoom” video conference lesson. Our new daily routine was something that was forced upon us by what the Singapore government calls a “Circuit Breaker,” which is in practice a lock down. Businesses with the exception of the “essential” ones have been shut down and everyone is working from home. With the exception of going out to buy food or being rushed to the hospital, people are supposed to stay at home.

This measure was introduced by the government after Singapore saw a spike in cases of Covid-19 cases. Initial measures seemed to be working but then they started jumping and the government, which had previously worked on surgical measures, then decided to use a blunter instrument.

What is noteworthy about this spike in cases is the fact that the key clusters have been linked to dormitories housing foreign workers. More on the story can be found at:

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/106-new-covid-19-cases-39-linked-to-known-clusters-at-foreign-worker-dormitories

The question is, why are we surprised that something like this didn’t happen sooner? As I’ve often said, the Indian and Bangladeshi workers who clean our estates, build our swanky buildings and man our shipyards are the bottom of the proverbial food chain in Singapore. They do the jobs we won’t do no matter how bad the economic climate and the local population generally views them with disdain (The common complaint is that they smell when they get on the train – I’ve had to make a point that nobody is bound to smell good after 12 hours in the hot tropical sun).  Not only do these guys do the backbreaking work for very little money (overtime can be as generous as $1.26 an hour), they are the backbone of a lucrative industry called labour supply (Polite term for slave trading – I give you 1 worker at $20 an hour but pay the worker $5 an hour), which also feeds another industries like supplying accommodation, phone cards and cheap booze (which was blamed for causing a riot in 2013, though the “unimportant” detail of the police seeming more interested in helping the bus driver than ran over a worker is not mentioned)

While the dormitories that the workers are often housed in, are not the slums one might imagine them to be (For full disclosure, I’ve seen Westlite Toh Guan from the outside and it was surprisingly pleasant), the living conditions are at best cramped. Even the nicest dormitories will squeeze a few guys into a room (Westlite Toh Guan has capacity of 7,800 beds and a total floor area of 33,371 square meters). More on the state of workers dormitories can be found at:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/coronavirus-covid-19-s11-westlite-dormitories-workers-12614988

Westlite Toh Guan is actually considered five-star on the scale of things. The business of workers accommodation is generally as case of cramming as much as you an in as little space as possible. To be fair to the Minister of Manpower, she is absolutely correct when she says that standards must be raised.

However, while what she’s saying is correct, she and her predecessors have been saying this for nearly two decades. However, as she’s mentioned, in the report by ChannelNewsAsia, the construction industry has consistently squealed and complained that this would add to their costs and the government has not been willing to offend the construction industry. As mentioned, foreign labour is lucrative for everyone except the foreign labourer and from the government’s perspective, who gives a shit about the plight of the workers from India and Bangladesh?

Hopefully Covid-19 will change things when it comes to foreign labour. The system has survived because everyone seemed to function in a separate world. The Indian and Bangladeshi workers put up with their lot because they had a means of earning money they could not have earned back home. They were willing to work and live rough. The rest of us didn’t care as long as they didn’t complain and we only saw them as figures on a construction site (A former Minister even went as far as to celebrate how the virus has stopped workers and maids from sitting in parks because his residents were concerned that foreign workers had the audacity to want to be human and “chill out” on their day off).

Covid 19 is truly Singaporean in as much as it affects people regardless of race, language or religion. It has shown that it has no regards for the barriers we place on ourselves. It has shown that the conditions of the workers do have a consequence for the rest of us. Industries that depend on foreign labour are going to have to revamp and restructure. Profits will have to come from being excellent rather than on squeezing workers to the last penny.

Nobody is saying that industries have to pay extra to workers. What we are saying is that you have to ensure that workers don’t live in conditions that you would never live in. By all means have a few to a room but make sure its not a manner that will cause diseases to break out. When people talk about the treatment of employees and customers, this is the ultimate guide – see to it that you workers can live so that they don’t kill off your customers.