From the perspective of labour economics assistant professor Walter Edgar Theseira, who teaches at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the strike and its aftermath have demonstrated “potentially serious vulnerabilities” that arise from Singapore’s significant reliance on low-cost foreign labour.
To him, in fact, the strike could be viewed in the same vein as the Foxconn industrial actions in China — as a key sign to the end of an era of low wages and poor working conditions.
Singapore’s low-wage foreign worker employment system hinges mainly on the import not simply of the workers themselves, but also the low wages and poor working conditions of their source countries to Singapore, he noted. Full story
