Say What, Swee Say?

ST Photo: Desmond Lui for Straits Times

According to Labour Chief Lim Swee Say, by 2015, 10,000 cleaners will earn at least $1,000 a month.   

So why has the pay of cleaners been so miserable for so long. In fact, some are earning less that they did in previous years. My gut feel is there are just too much outsourcing, too much sub-contracting and too many middlemen getting a cut of the pay that is actually due to the cleaners. We celebrate Labour Day but physical labour and dignity of cleaners and security guards is not worth respecting, unlike the labour of plastic surgeons and ministers. Of course, surgeons and ministers deserve higher pay but cleaners need a decent minmum wage to survive too.

Allowing cheaper foreign workers who are willing to accept lower pay also cause cleaners' pay to stagnate and even decrease.

Gone are the days when organisations and ministries employed their own housekeeping (cleaning) staff.   Due to cost cutting and operating with cost efficiency, I doubt any ministry now employs cleaners directly. They are outsourced or contracted to cleaning contractors who may even subcontract the contract to a subcontractor. 

"Mr Lim also noted that the minimum wages in Europe today are so high that many young graduates are unable to enter the job market. European countries are already talking about lowering the minimum wages, he said, without referring to any specific country."

I find it tiring for politicians to use selective comparison to make a point to serve one's argument. To serve one's purpose. The above scare mongering so as not to pay minimum wage is pretty sickening.

I do not know what minimum wage Lim Swee Say is referring to but to state "that the minimum wages in Europe today are so high that many young graduates are unable to enter the job market" is ridiculously funny!


I may be wrong but my perception of minimum wage is minimum wage for the lowest paid in the industries. That is, minimum wage of maybe cleaners, security guards, hawker's assistants or coffeeshop assistants and others whose pay is hardly enough to sustain a decent livelihood of providing 3 cheap meals a day and a roof over one's head. 


How on earth a Labour Chief and a Minister in the PM's Office would think that young graduates would want to enter the job market as a cleaner or security guard or a hawker's assistant is beyond me. Is Lim Swee Say blind to the fact that local cleaners comprises mainly of old uncles and aunties who cannot find a better way to make a living?


Thus, the above statement is another Swee Say Special, not unlike what he said below:

PAP rulers were so concern about ministers pay that they had to have a commission of inquiry to decide how many millions to pay the various PAP ministers. To add insult to injury, The Ministers Salary Review Commission headed by Gerard Ee had to pay Mercer $860,000.00 to add substance to the inquiry [Link]

Isn't it funny that PAP ministers paid millions by taxpayers can be justified by COI whereas the poorest paid cleaners do not deserve a decent minimum wage for survival? Or is it because many young graduates will be unable to enter the job market if we increase the pay of the lowest paid?


How in hell can PAP ministers justify and defend their million dollars salaries with COI and demean the labour of the poor with crap like this is sinful!  


If this is not puke inducing, I do not know what is.

What do you think?

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