Happily, Non-Essential

The Straits Times, Singapore’s flagship newspaper has got itself into the crosshairs of Singapore’s professional classes, thanks to a survey it conducted and published in its Sunday edition (14 June 2020), which revealed what Singaporeans thought about certain professions and their necessity to the rest of society. The now infamous infographic can be seen below:

Essentially, the graph showed that what the 1,000 odd Singaporeans surveyed thought of as essential, included people like doctors, cleaners, garbage collectors and deliverymen. The people who topped the list were the artist, social media managers, PR specialist, Business Consultants and Human Resource Managers. It was clear that the with the exception of doctors, the “essential” professionals were primarily blue-collar workers while the “non-essential” guys were what you’d call “working-professionals.”

The survey has royally pissed off our professional classes. There have been snide remarks about how the Straits Times conducted a crappy survey, thus showing why it’s becoming less relevant. There have been a few remarks from professionals that can be summed up as “if you think I’m non-essential, wait till you need this,” and I even read someone complain that society was being selfish because people were sitting at home watching Netflix but not respecting the work of the artiste who produced the movies they were consuming. There was an accusation that the Straits Times was dividing society into the essential and non-essential.

As someone who has made his living by selling “non-essential” professional services (advertising, public relations, legal and liquidation and accountancy), I was actually delighted to see the results of this survey. For far too long, Singapore has been a society that has literally spat on people in “blue-collar” jobs (I never tire of talking about the horny aunties who thought I was a reforming convict based on the fact that I speak the way I do but worked in a restaurant) and we’ve worshipped the “professions” to an over the top extent. I remember my oldest friend who had given up a lucrative legal career to be a primary school teacher. She told me that she had to sweep floors as part of her job and then said, “Remember how we were told that we didn’t study hard, we’d end up sweeping floors for a living.”

She was right. People of my generation (I’ll be 46 soon, so it’s Gen X) were told that the punishment for not studying was a bright career in sweeping streets. Parents, who had worked humble jobs like sweeping streets, would sweat blood and tears to ensure that their kids would never follow in their footsteps.

I think of my ex-wife’s family. The one person in her family that I admired was my former father-in-law who drove a Mercedes and put two kids to university by selling eggs (he literally picked up from his wholesaler and drove around his clients, the industrial cafes of Singapore). However, all his hard work was meant to ensure that his kids would never deliver eggs. The hero of her family was my former brother-in-law, who ended up working for Defense Science Organisation (part of the government) after getting all sorts of fancy degrees. For me, the tragedy of her family was that it abandoned something valuable (years of building up a network of relationships and physically demanding work) for something that produces very little value (with all due respect to my former brother-in-law, do we really need to think of more ways to exterminate people, especially for a country that is unlikely to face war?)

Our worship of the professions, which worked alongside with our disdain for blue collar jobs has helped us create one of the widest pay differentials. A working professional with at least five-years-experience in Singapore should be able to draw around S$4,000 plus (based on an averageaccountant pay). By contrast, blue collar worker with a similar number of years of experience would be lucky to make around $2,500 a month. This hit home when I got once paid $800 for drafting and disseminating a press release, which took me all of two or three hours. That was exactly what I took home from a month of working in the Bistrot (based on four hours a night for 26 nights a month).

Well, whatever one might say about Covid-19, I’m glad that its finally made us realise the importance of the guys doing the menial work and the lack of importance of the “high-flyer” jobs.

As a matter of clarity, I’m not suggesting that there’s no value in anyone’s work. Lawyers, for example, are important when it comes to contracts. You need an accountant to help you keep track of where your money is going. I’d always stress to clients in my incarnation in PR that you need someone to ensure you look good to the public, even when things are bad. Advertising professionals help drive sales.

It’s good that the working professionals are getting upset in as much as it shows that they take their profession seriously and have enough passion to do a good job. However, the question at stake here is – whether your job is “essential,” which is a word often associated with the break down of things.

I take myself as an example of a remarkably unremarkable person in these circumstances. I’ve never had much money to begin with, so why do I need an accountant. Since I don’t have much money to begin with, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll need a lawyer and let’s not talk about my need for a PR or advertising consultant to promote my non-existent image.

However, when we have a situation where I could easily come down with a nasty bug, I definitely need a doctor. I happen to take clean streets as a given and I expect the trash to be collected. Being clean has become especially important as it reduces the likelihood that I’ll get a nasty bug. Are we surprised that the average Joe (or Ah Beng, Mutu and Ahmad) think that these jobs are the “essential” jobs to their lives?

What’s heartening is the view that Singaporeans are willing to pay more for these services if it means the workers get more and it’s also heartening to see that the majority of people understand the difficulties of these jobs in as much as while they’re jobs that are regarded as essential, they’re also jobs that people don’t want to do, even if more money was offered.

Let’s hope that the understanding of the importance of blue-collar work leads to people backing up their new found understanding with their wallets. Let’s not accept excuses that improving the lot of blue-collar workers is harmful consumers. Singapore needs to move beyond being a place for “cheap” this and that, when cheap means keeping people poor so that a group of middle men can get rich.

At the other end of the scale, I would suggest that it’s time to relook at how professions look at themselves. If I look at the industry that I grew up in (advertising) and the industry that I work with on a regular basis (legal and accounting), it’s reached a stage where groups which were initially advisors have to industry have become industries themselves.

While this is for the most part, a positive thing, its also had an unintended consequence of getting the respective industries to treat themselves too seriously. In the case of advertising it came from the complaint that advertising people became too focused on making ads for themselves at award ceremonies rather than on selling products, while in the legal industry, it became about keeping problems alive. People in professional services became guilty of falling in love with being professionals. The profession becomes a mystic art and practitioners indulge in titles like “guru.”

Look at the way these industries bill – through the time sheet, where they charge by the hour. This system encourages professional services to think of themselves as a mystic art, where the customer has to pay for wise counsel. It goes without saying that this system does not encourage efficiency.

I never saw an issue in “results” payment. I’ve billed clients based on coverage obtained and been ticked off by fellow professionals for taking a risk. Lawyers in America charge on their ability to win cases. This is the way things should be. The client comes to you for advice because you are an expert at this or that. Your payment should be based on how well you achieve the objective rather than on your ability to delay the problem.

Unfortunately, in places like Singapore, you end up having “champerty” laws, which make payment by results illegal and encourage the professions to view themselves as “cults.”

Covid-19 should be a social changer as much as an economic one. Respect and increased value for blue collar work should accompany a desire by working professionals to remember their original purpose of using knowledge to serve rather than to turn their knowledge into a cult.

There are hopeful signs. The example that comes to mind is a friend who named his law firm after an ice cream flavor His argument was thatlaw should be a simple process and used to serve businesses and not the otherway round. To put his money where his mouth is, he developed a document assembly system that reduces the time a client needs a lawyer to draft documents. It goes without saying that this has upset his fellow professionals (drafting documents is a major money spinner for lawyers). However, his argument is simple – he’s there to serve the businesses rather than his fellow professionals and he’ll do what he can to demystify his profession, which in the end is good for the profession.