From The Straits Times
By Kor Kian Beng
Published 24 Aug 2010
ONE common view is that fewer foreign workers here will reduce competition for jobs and lessen the social impact that their presence causes.
The Government's concern, on the other hand, is that a cutback would cause labour shortages in some industries and slow economic growth.
But labour chief Lim Swee Say believes there is a way to address these contrasting concerns and still have the best of both worlds.
Speaking at a National Day observance ceremony yesterday, he outlined a three-pronged strategy to achieve this.
- Expand the resident workforce by tapping into the pool of Singaporeans and permanent residents, especially those who are older, and reaching out to economically inactive women;
- Boost productivity of the workforce;
- Improve the skills of foreign workers who do come here.
The combination of these three factors can be 'a very powerful tool', he told over 500 union leaders and staff of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC).
Explaining how growing the resident workforce could help, he noted that nearly 76 per cent of the 2.19 million Singapore citizens and permanent residents aged 25 to 64 are currently employed.
Raising the employment rate among this group by just one percentage point would see 22,000 people added to the workforce, he said.
Similarly, if every one in Singapore's workforce of 2.9 million people improved on productivity by a similar one percentage point, their output would be equal to what 29,000 additional workers would have produced, he added.
The combination of having more older individuals and inactive women placed in jobs, and improving productivity, would be akin to having added 51,000 people to the workforce, he said.
'So it's possible to have the best of both worlds by improving employment and productivity so that we can increase gross domestic product and, at the same time, manage the inflow of foreign workers,' said Mr Lim, who is Minister in the Prime Minister's Office.
Nanyang Technological University labour economist Chew Soon Beng said if the strategy that Mr Lim put forward proved successful, there would be no need for difficult trade- offs to be made - such as between having fewer foreign workers and slower growth.
'If we're able to do that, it would see fewer residents being jobless and workers taking home higher wages. Foreign workers would also be brought in to complement locals, not replace them.'
But the realities on the ground were that lower-skilled foreigners would continue to be viewed by some employers as a cheaper source of labour compared to hiring the locals, said Prof Chew.
'Also, productivity improvements won't happen overnight. So it remains to be seen if such a strategy would work.'
Similarly, Barclays Capital economist Leong Wai Ho cited the need to strike a balance between trying to get more out of the workforce and inadvertently creating stress on workers, which could be counter-productive.
Mr Lim, however, said the strategy would achieve another important aim: having a workforce that all types of workers can be part of.
This was one area the NTUC would focus on. It also aims to build a more inclusive union membership to represent all segments of the workforce.
In fact, Mr Lim said that if the NTUC was successful in its membership drive, it could be the world's first labour movement to serve the entire workforce.
'Today in 2010, you cannot find any labour movement in the world where one labour movement is positioned to serve all collars, all ages, all nationalities of workers. None,' he said of its goal.
NTUC aims to have 650,000 members by 2011 and to hit the one million mark by 2015.
The observance ceremony yesterday, organised by the NTUC and the Ong Teng Cheong Labour Leadership Institute, was the last of 26 ceremonies held by unions and companies across Singapore this month to mark National Day.
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