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.
