200 SMRT bus drivers refuse to go to work over pay issue
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ChiefKiasu:
Totally agree with you. Nationalisation takes the pressure off delivering ever increasing profits. Nationalising is on going, without using that word. Putting in $1.1B and putting Gov men back into the system are the tell tale signs. See what they do, not what they say.
It might be overly simplistic to dismiss the concept of nationalisation on the basis that it is incompatible with capitalistic ideals. And it has nothing to do with whether a nation is \"educated\" or not. The key argument against nationalisation is that it tends to lead to poorer performance in the long run, given the lack of incentives to exceed prescribed quality levels, since the organisation will not be profit driven.
.
The strike is a failure of HR and Mgmt. Fare increase/ decrease will not prevent the strike. -
3Boys:
Service delivery : Profit oriented vs quality (KPI etc..?) oriented.
How does that improve service delivery or costs, hidden or otherwise?
you say leh?
Cost : maybe no improvement.
But cost is not the public's concern. Service delivery is.
If the target objective is self sufficiency via fares, vs profit maximising.. why would it not be expected to be able to deliver higher standard of service with lower fares? -
Public transport is not very good now, agree?
To improve public transport need more money right? But what has that to do with car owners?
Actually the simplest solution is to nationalize the public transport since govt are already co-funding so much infrastructure & why are the 2 companies making & taking all the profit without coming out with money for all these public-funded infrastructure which they then profit from? (and furthermore they are GLCs anyway with big govt ownership). I am sure getting rid of them can improve the public transport & still reduce the fares (by using the profits now pocketed by these 2 companies). The so-called efficiency poor if nationalized is just plain rubbish. If entities owned & operated by govt cannot be efficient, then we should privatize all GLCs, Temasek, all statutory boards, all town councils, and even ministers' jobs! We can employ Tony Brown & Bill Clinton & still has spare change left for the pay of 1 full minister in our cabinet! :imcool:limlim:
Should the public transport system being run with the welfare format, the tax payers are to foot the bill. Will it be fair? To those that rely on public transport they may find it agreeable, but to others who don't, what's your say?
Car user subsidise public transport, so? I don't see why is it unfair. w/o public transport to ease the burden on the roads, would car user enjoy mostly congestion free road?
If there are less cars on the road, we may not even need so much road space (3 lanes, 4 lanes) in the first place! How many road in Singapore is not ply by buses at all? what ignorance.. -
Foreign workers stop work at construction site: Another dispute?
http://business.asiaone.com/A1Business/News/Story/A1Story20121208-388396/2.html
If this is true, and with all the recent copycats; it may go down in history SMRT drivers' strike changed the landscape....... that of a strike-free Singapore..... -
sleepy:
More signs :yikes:Some professors already forsee this. Article written on 1 Dec
A sign of things to come?
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/smrt-bus-drivers%E2%80%99-strike--a-sign-of-things-to-come--035746969.html
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/singapore-wages-may-worsen-fastest-031944183.html
Singapore Wages May Worsen Fastest Rich-World Inflation: Economy
By Shamim Adam | Bloomberg ā Fri, Dec 7, 2012 11:19 AM SGT.. .
When dozens of Chinese bus drivers held Singapore's first strike in 26 years last week, the island deported the perpetrators. Getting rid of the soaring prices that are emboldening calls for higher wages won't be as easy.
Rising housing, transportation and business costs have given the city state the fastest inflation among the developed world's biggest economies. The illegal protest by the SMRT Corp. (MRT) drivers in late November may herald a further escalation in price pressures, as even foreign laborers whose cheaper wages have helped restrain inflation express dissatisfaction with their incomes.
\"All price go up, only salary no up,\" Delowar Hussin, a Bangladeshi laborer, said as he hauled a bag of concrete debris into a dumpster outside a Singapore office tower housing Morgan Stanley (MS) and Citigroup Inc. (C) Hussin, 41, said he earns a basic wage of S$18 ($15) a day, a rate that hasn't changed in the past four years even as his monthly living costs jumped to as much as S$400 from less than S$300.
Singapore is grappling with the elevated inflation that comes with years of economic growth and population expansion on an island smaller than New York City, with rising demand fueling record property and car prices. The country tightened monetary policy this year while neighbors from Thailand to the Philippines cut interest rates, spurring gains in the currency even as the government predicts gross domestic product will rise at the slowest pace in three years.
Adjustment Period
\"Singapore Inc. is facing an adjustment period and there is no easy way out,\" said Kit Wei Zheng, an economist at Citigroup who previously worked for the Monetary Authority of Singapore. \"The work-cheap model is reaching its limits especially since the cost of living is high. With inflation likely to stay above historical averages, macroeconomic policy will likely remain on a tightening bias.\"
Singapore has the highest inflation rate among 27 economies with GDP of at least $100 billion and classified by the International Monetary Fund as advanced. Price gains on the island of 5.3 million people have reached 4 percent or more every month bar one since November 2010, more than double the 1.9 percent average in the past two decades.
Inflation is forecast by the central bank to average more than 4.5 percent this year and be in a 3.5 percent-to-4.5 percent range in 2013. \"Persistent tightness\" in the labor market will support slightly stronger wage increases in 2013, which will continue to be passed through to consumer prices, the central bank and Trade Ministry said last month.
More Strife
\"I wouldn't be surprised if labor strife becomes a more frequent occurrence going forward,\" said Irvin Seah, an economist at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. in Singapore. \"High inflation will very likely persist in the years ahead. Workers will surely demand higher wages to compensate for their loss in real income.\"
In a country that's host to 2 million foreigners, many hotels, restaurants, builders and shipyards rely on overseas workers willing to toil for lower wages than Singaporeans, and employers are bracing for the possibility of further discord. Two workers from China refused to come down from the top of a crane today, Channel NewsAsia reported on its website. Police said the incident was related to a work dispute and that Singapore Civil Defence Force and Ministry of Manpower officials are also at the scene.
Singapore Health Services Pte, the country's largest healthcare group with more than 16,000 employees, is reviewing its business contingency plans in the aftermath of the drivers' strike, said Goh Leong Huat, deputy group director of human resources for the government-linked operator of hospitals and polyclinics.
The government said in March it will spend about S$200 million to increase salaries of healthcare workers. About 20 percent of public healthcare employees were foreigners at the end of 2011, according to the Health Ministry.
China Salaries
Average urban salaries in China increased 12 percent in the first nine months from a year earlier without adjusting for inflation, after climbing 14.4 percent for all of 2011 and 13.3 percent in 2010, government data show. In Indonesia, the government said it may raise the lowest required wages to 2 million rupiah ($208) a month, while Malaysia this year joined Thailand and Vietnam in implementing a minimum income. Singapore doesn't have such a rate.
\"Wages in neighboring countries are playing huge catch-up and in China in particular, wages have been outstripping GDP growth,\" said Vishnu Varathan, a Singapore-based economist at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. \"People will start assessing whether the trade-offs to come to a foreign land, working long hours and being away from the family is worth it.\"
Job Creation
Median monthly incomes in Singapore rose 7.1 percent this year without adjusting for inflation, after climbing 8.3 percent in 2011, according to a preliminary report on the island's workforce by the Manpower Ministry last month.
Singapore's jobless rate fell to 1.9 percent last quarter, while Australia reported today its unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped in November. New Zealand's central bank kept interest rates unchanged, while South Korea's economy grew less than initially estimated in the third quarter.
The European Central Bank and the Bank of England will probably keep their benchmark rates unchanged today, according to Bloomberg surveys. A report may show the euro-area economy succumbed to a recession for the second time in four years last quarter, reiterating an earlier estimate. The U.S. Labor Department may say fewer Americans filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments last week, a survey showed.
Currency Gains
Singapore, which uses the exchange rate to manage inflation, unexpectedly refrained from slowing the pace of its currency's appreciation in its October policy review even after the economy contracted last quarter. The Singapore dollar's 6.3 percent gain this year has done little to damp inflation stemming from domestic price pressures.
Home prices climbed to a record in the third quarter, and the cost of a permit for a small car rose to an unprecedented S$78,523 on Dec. 5, from S$46,889 at the start of the year. The country auctions limited vehicle permits to control congestion and pollution.
Adding to price pressures is a government drive to cool the inflow of foreign workers, after voter anger against competition for jobs, education and housing boosted support for the political opposition in elections last year. Opposition parties have said that the large numbers of overseas workers have depressed local wages.
Higher car and property prices and the measures to tighten rules on hiring overseas workers are driving up the \"overall cost structure\" of the economy, spurring inflationary pressures that are a result of \"self-imposed\" policies, according to DBS's Seah.
Losing Edge
\"Singapore used to have the upper hand on inflation but somehow has been losing its edge in this aspect in recent years,\" said Seah, who formerly worked for Singapore's Trade Ministry. \"Inflation will remain significantly higher than normal for as long as those policy measures remain in place. The policies are growth-limiting and pushing Singapore closer and closer toward the brink of recession.\"
The city-state avoided falling into a technical recession after second-quarter GDP data was revised to show the economy grew. The $240 billion economy is forecast by the government to expand about 1.5 percent this year and 1 percent to 3 percent in 2013.
The dispute between SMRT and more than a hundred of its bus drivers from China led to the repatriation of 29 protesters, while five others were charged in court for instigating the strike. Of the five, one was sentenced to six weeks' jail on Dec. 3 while the rest were allowed bail after appearing in court today.
Wage Disparity
At the core of the disagreement was a disparity in wages that the company pays the Chinese nationals and their Malaysian and Singaporean counterparts. Even before the strike, SMRT, the island's biggest subway operator and one of its two main bus companies, had said that rising wage costs would impact its profitability.
The incident highlighted lingering public resentment for the presence of some foreigners in the country, even as it showed overseas laborers demanding better treatment from their Singapore employers.
In a snap poll of 313 Singapore citizens conducted by a government feedback unit and released after the strike, about eight of 10 respondents said the Chinese drivers should be \"punished to the full extent of the law\" and authorities have \"acted swiftly\" to bring the situation under control.
For Hussin, who has to support his wife, child and mother in Bangladeshi city of Khulna, the repercussions of asking for higher pay may be more than he can afford.
\"Not happy also no choice, have to work,\" he said. \"I want to ask my boss for more money but scared he will scold and tell me to go back to Bangladesh. Maybe after my contract over, I look for other company that pay me more or go home.\"
This article was originally posted on Bloomberg.com on Dec 6, 2012 2:46 PM GMT+0800.
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wonderm:
I feel that privatization of public transport and leaving it to market forces only work if there is real competition. There are only 2 transport companies here, and great pains were taken to ensure that there is no repetition of bus and/or mrt routes. So it is essentially a monopoly. Alternatives like private cars and taxis are not an option for most SC due to the ridiculously high costs involved. So, the private operator has absolutely no incentive to provide value for money services at all. In other countries, if the public transort provider does not provide value for money services, the people can just drive, and so it provides competition for the Providers. People will still take their buses or trains no matter how high the cost is or how poor the services are. The fines imposed by gov is a complete joke, considering that the Max fine is $1 million, while SMRT profit is $100+ million a year. Their KPI are to maximize their profits for obvious reasons.
My response to your questions:limlim:
And, to those who feel that using tax money to pay for public transport is unfair..
Will you feel better if the public transport is sub-standard and many pple are driven to drive and you got to share the road with 100x more cars on the road? sounds good? jams from one end to the other end of the express way.. you like?
Or would you rather public transport be improved such that pple are encouraged to take it and you can zip thru the roads with ease as pple give up on cars and less pple to compete with you for road space?
What say you?
I do not want a sub-standard public transport.
I rather our public transport be improved.
But are you saying the above are better achieved when the public transport system is nationalized? I am not challenging you, just curious if anyone has some data to show some comparisons between the 2 models.
I agree public transport is an important basic service which should be supported by tax money. However, the best way of spending that tax money is not so straight forward. The answer could very well be a hybrid model with both direct and indirect investment/subsidies. Personally, I don't think nationalizing our public transport system is the best approach. On the other hand, I think the government could provide more transport subsidies, for example, to needy families and senior citizens.
Therefore I feel that in theory, privatization is good. But in SG's context where there are no competition at all, this might not be the best way. -
Dora1:
Yes, you made some good points there.
I feel that privatization of public transport and leaving it to market forces only work if there is real competition. There are only 2 transport companies here, and great pains were taken to ensure that there is no repetition of bus and/or mrt routes. So it is essentially a monopoly. Alternatives like private cars and taxis are not an option for most SC due to the ridiculously high costs involved. So, the private operator has absolutely no incentive to provide value for money services at all. In other countries, if the public transort provider does not provide value for money services, the people can just drive, and so it provides competition for the Providers. People will still take their buses or trains no matter how high the cost is or how poor the services are. The fines imposed by gov is a complete joke, considering that the Max fine is $1 million, while SMRT profit is $100+ million a year. Their KPI are to maximize their profits for obvious reasons.
Therefore I feel that in theory, privatization is good. But in SG's context where there are no competition at all, this might not be the best way.
SMRT is making more profits and giving out higher dividends to shareholders over the years. Whether it should be nationalized or not, it certainly can and should do a better job than it is doing now. -
sleepy:
Thanks for sharing this somberly piece of good article, Sleepy.Ā
More signs :yikes:sleepy:
Some professors already forsee this. Article written on 1 Dec
A sign of things to come?
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/smrt-bus-drivers%E2%80%99-strike--a-sign-of-things-to-come--035746969.html
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/singapore-wages-may-worsen-fastest-031944183.html
Singapore Wages May Worsen Fastest Rich-World Inflation: Economy
By Shamim Adam | Bloomberg ā Fri, Dec 7, 2012 11:19 AM SGT.. .
When dozens of Chinese bus drivers held Singapore's first strike in 26 years last week, the island deported the perpetrators. Getting rid of the soaring prices that are emboldening calls for higher wages won't be as easy.
Rising housing, transportation and business costs have given the city state the fastest inflation among the developed world's biggest economies. The illegal protest by the SMRT Corp. (MRT) drivers in late November may herald a further escalation in price pressures, as even foreign laborers whose cheaper wages have helped restrain inflation express dissatisfaction with their incomes.
\"All price go up, only salary no up,\" Delowar Hussin, a Bangladeshi laborer, said as he hauled a bag of concrete debris into a dumpster outside a Singapore office tower housing Morgan Stanley (MS) and Citigroup Inc. (C) Hussin, 41, said he earns a basic wage of S$18 ($15) a day, a rate that hasn't changed in the past four years even as his monthly living costs jumped to as much as S$400 from less than S$300.
Singapore is grappling with the elevated inflation that comes with years of economic growth and population expansion on an island smaller than New York City, with rising demand fueling record property and car prices. The country tightened monetary policy this year while neighbors from Thailand to the Philippines cut interest rates, spurring gains in the currency even as the government predicts gross domestic product will rise at the slowest pace in three years.
Adjustment Period
\"Singapore Inc. is facing an adjustment period and there is no easy way out,\" said Kit Wei Zheng, an economist at Citigroup who previously worked for the Monetary Authority of Singapore. \"The work-cheap model is reaching its limits especially since the cost of living is high. With inflation likely to stay above historical averages, macroeconomic policy will likely remain on a tightening bias.\"
Singapore has the highest inflation rate among 27 economies with GDP of at least $100 billion and classified by the International Monetary Fund as advanced. Price gains on the island of 5.3 million people have reached 4 percent or more every month bar one since November 2010, more than double the 1.9 percent average in the past two decades.
Inflation is forecast by the central bank to average more than 4.5 percent this year and be in a 3.5 percent-to-4.5 percent range in 2013. \"Persistent tightness\" in the labor market will support slightly stronger wage increases in 2013, which will continue to be passed through to consumer prices, the central bank and Trade Ministry said last month.
More Strife
\"I wouldn't be surprised if labor strife becomes a more frequent occurrence going forward,\" said Irvin Seah, an economist at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. in Singapore. \"High inflation will very likely persist in the years ahead. Workers will surely demand higher wages to compensate for their loss in real income.\"
In a country that's host to 2 million foreigners, many hotels, restaurants, builders and shipyards rely on overseas workers willing to toil for lower wages than Singaporeans, and employers are bracing for the possibility of further discord. Two workers from China refused to come down from the top of a crane today, Channel NewsAsia reported on its website. Police said the incident was related to a work dispute and that Singapore Civil Defence Force and Ministry of Manpower officials are also at the scene.
Singapore Health Services Pte, the country's largest healthcare group with more than 16,000 employees, is reviewing its business contingency plans in the aftermath of the drivers' strike, said Goh Leong Huat, deputy group director of human resources for the government-linked operator of hospitals and polyclinics.
The government said in March it will spend about S$200 million to increase salaries of healthcare workers. About 20 percent of public healthcare employees were foreigners at the end of 2011, according to the Health Ministry.
China Salaries
Average urban salaries in China increased 12 percent in the first nine months from a year earlier without adjusting for inflation, after climbing 14.4 percent for all of 2011 and 13.3 percent in 2010, government data show. In Indonesia, the government said it may raise the lowest required wages to 2 million rupiah ($208) a month, while Malaysia this year joined Thailand and Vietnam in implementing a minimum income. Singapore doesn't have such a rate.
\"Wages in neighboring countries are playing huge catch-up and in China in particular, wages have been outstripping GDP growth,\" said Vishnu Varathan, a Singapore-based economist at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. \"People will start assessing whether the trade-offs to come to a foreign land, working long hours and being away from the family is worth it.\"
Job Creation
Median monthly incomes in Singapore rose 7.1 percent this year without adjusting for inflation, after climbing 8.3 percent in 2011, according to a preliminary report on the island's workforce by the Manpower Ministry last month.
Singapore's jobless rate fell to 1.9 percent last quarter, while Australia reported today its unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped in November. New Zealand's central bank kept interest rates unchanged, while South Korea's economy grew less than initially estimated in the third quarter.
The European Central Bank and the Bank of England will probably keep their benchmark rates unchanged today, according to Bloomberg surveys. A report may show the euro-area economy succumbed to a recession for the second time in four years last quarter, reiterating an earlier estimate. The U.S. Labor Department may say fewer Americans filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments last week, a survey showed.
Currency Gains
Singapore, which uses the exchange rate to manage inflation, unexpectedly refrained from slowing the pace of its currency's appreciation in its October policy review even after the economy contracted last quarter. The Singapore dollar's 6.3 percent gain this year has done little to damp inflation stemming from domestic price pressures.
Home prices climbed to a record in the third quarter, and the cost of a permit for a small car rose to an unprecedented S$78,523 on Dec. 5, from S$46,889 at the start of the year. The country auctions limited vehicle permits to control congestion and pollution.
Adding to price pressures is a government drive to cool the inflow of foreign workers, after voter anger against competition for jobs, education and housing boosted support for the political opposition in elections last year. Opposition parties have said that the large numbers of overseas workers have depressed local wages.
Higher car and property prices and the measures to tighten rules on hiring overseas workers are driving up the \"overall cost structure\" of the economy, spurring inflationary pressures that are a result of \"self-imposed\" policies, according to DBS's Seah.
Losing Edge
\"Singapore used to have the upper hand on inflation but somehow has been losing its edge in this aspect in recent years,\" said Seah, who formerly worked for Singapore's Trade Ministry. \"Inflation will remain significantly higher than normal for as long as those policy measures remain in place. The policies are growth-limiting and pushing Singapore closer and closer toward the brink of recession.\"
The city-state avoided falling into a technical recession after second-quarter GDP data was revised to show the economy grew. The $240 billion economy is forecast by the government to expand about 1.5 percent this year and 1 percent to 3 percent in 2013.
The dispute between SMRT and more than a hundred of its bus drivers from China led to the repatriation of 29 protesters, while five others were charged in court for instigating the strike. Of the five, one was sentenced to six weeks' jail on Dec. 3 while the rest were allowed bail after appearing in court today.
Wage Disparity
At the core of the disagreement was a disparity in wages that the company pays the Chinese nationals and their Malaysian and Singaporean counterparts. Even before the strike, SMRT, the island's biggest subway operator and one of its two main bus companies, had said that rising wage costs would impact its profitability.
The incident highlighted lingering public resentment for the presence of some foreigners in the country, even as it showed overseas laborers demanding better treatment from their Singapore employers.
In a snap poll of 313 Singapore citizens conducted by a government feedback unit and released after the strike, about eight of 10 respondents said the Chinese drivers should be \"punished to the full extent of the law\" and authorities have \"acted swiftly\" to bring the situation under control.
For Hussin, who has to support his wife, child and mother in Bangladeshi city of Khulna, the repercussions of asking for higher pay may be more than he can afford.
\"Not happy also no choice, have to work,\" he said. \"I want to ask my boss for more money but scared he will scold and tell me to go back to Bangladesh. Maybe after my contract over, I look for other company that pay me more or go home.\"
This article was originally posted on Bloomberg.com on Dec 6, 2012 2:46 PM GMT+0800.
Lots of people need to wake up, hopefully in time to manage their expectation, make necessary adjustment for the rainy days, cut the non-constructive empty talks and criticism, and all the navel gazing; and stop the habit of barking senseless complains... (Ooops! some may say \"ouch\" because my post is nakedly hurting their valued \"values\"!)
Feet on the ground, folks. (... before you shoot, cos you may just land on the stars!!) -
nowadays, happy happy go to work. Not happy take MC.
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Dora1:
I feel that privatization of public transport and leaving it to market forces only work if there is real competition. There are only 2 transport companies here, and great pains were taken to ensure that there is no repetition of bus and/or mrt routes. So it is essentially a monopoly. Alternatives like private cars and taxis are not an option for most SC due to the ridiculously high costs involved. So, the private operator has absolutely no incentive to provide value for money services at all. In other countries, if the public transort provider does not provide value for money services, the people can just drive, and so it provides competition for the Providers. People will still take their buses or trains no matter how high the cost is or how poor the services are. The fines imposed by gov is a complete joke, considering that the Max fine is $1 million, while SMRT profit is $100+ million a year. Their KPI are to maximize their profits for obvious reasons.
My response to your questions:wonderm:
[quote=\"limlim\"]And, to those who feel that using tax money to pay for public transport is unfair..
Will you feel better if the public transport is sub-standard and many pple are driven to drive and you got to share the road with 100x more cars on the road? sounds good? jams from one end to the other end of the express way.. you like?
Or would you rather public transport be improved such that pple are encouraged to take it and you can zip thru the roads with ease as pple give up on cars and less pple to compete with you for road space?
What say you?
I do not want a sub-standard public transport.
I rather our public transport be improved.
But are you saying the above are better achieved when the public transport system is nationalized? I am not challenging you, just curious if anyone has some data to show some comparisons between the 2 models.
I agree public transport is an important basic service which should be supported by tax money. However, the best way of spending that tax money is not so straight forward. The answer could very well be a hybrid model with both direct and indirect investment/subsidies. Personally, I don't think nationalizing our public transport system is the best approach. On the other hand, I think the government could provide more transport subsidies, for example, to needy families and senior citizens.
Therefore I feel that in theory, privatization is good. But in SG's context where there are no competition at all, this might not be the best way.[/quote]About the \"value for money\" part, how much is the fare for MRT/LRT/bus ride per kilometer journey?
Poor service and high fare is comparing to which countries' public transport? Is your comparison of quality of service of public transport providers tallying with their fares? Any other \"more efficient\" and \"better service\" public transport in the world are charging a lower fare than SG? (Metro public transport comparison we are talking about, not the long distance coach.)
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