Workers rights are indivisible. We cannot ask for concessions on our own behalf but ignore or deny them to others because they happen to come from a different country. To use another hackneyed phrase, we are in this together. I can’t drive my own bus to work powered by petrol I processed myself on a road I laid myself. I can’t build my own office building or office furniture. I don’t cook my own food in the canteen or wash up the tableware.
If, as fellow workers, joint participants in this enterprise we call society, we cannot see this elementary truth, we have a lot of learning yet to do. But do it we must, because make no mistake about it, our government will have no hesitation in dealing with us in the same way it has dealt with the Chinese bus drivers. None whatsoever. Do not rest content that the PAP carries a torch for the Singaporean worker; it does not.
We cannot let these Chinese workers take the rap for asking only for fair employment. And we cannot agree to their punishment when all the processes that exist in our name denied them the basic right to have their grievances heard. Full story
