NWC recommends “sustainable” wage increase for Singapore workers
May 25th, 2010 | 
Author: In its latest wage guidelines for the year starting in July 2010 – June 2011, the National Wages Council (NWC) recommended that employers grant “sustainable” wage increases to Singapore workers while taking into consideration their performance and prospects.
With Singapore’s economy having “rebounded” strongly this year, there has been increasing calls for companies to restore wage freezes and cuts imposed last year during the global economic crisis.
NTUC’s Secretary-General Lim Swee Say was quoted as saying in Channel News Asia:
“The National Wages Council recognises that not all industries and enterprises would perform the same level. The quantum of wage increases, in terms of total wage increase, would depend on individual companies. But what is important is that based on the performance, most enterprises would give a fair share of gains, at the same time keep the wage increase flexible. This means not all must be in the built-in wage increase, some can be on year-end bonuses.”
The guidelines made by NWC are non-binding as there is no minimum wage system legislated in Singapore.
To compound matters, there are no independent trade unions as well thereby leaving Singapore workers completely at the mercy of employers to decide their salaries.
The only legal trade union NTUC is a pseudo-PAP organization which is always led by a PAP minister.
Singapore workers have few bargaining prowess due to the relentless influx and easy availability of cheap foreign workers in the labor market which depressed their wages.
While its name sounds grand, the reality is that NWC is just one of the many “toothless” organizations set up by the PAP to show that it “cares” for the plight of ordinary Singaporeans.
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21 Responses to “NWC recommends “sustainable” wage increase for Singapore workers”
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I welcome the great news.
Would NWC consider ministers’ 8.8% increase
“sustainable”, I wonder.
ALL we can safely say is that the MIWs humongous salaries and high pensions – the only citizens enjoying the taboo social welfare in Singapore – are not TAKING A TOIL on the citizens and Nation and is surely NOT SUSTAINABLE over the long-run.
Sorry mistyping_ on post @ 10.49 pm
here goes:_
All we can safely say is that the MIWs’ humongous salaries and high pensions – the only citizens enjpuing the taboo SOCIAL SECURITY payout in Singapore – are TAKING A TOIL on the citizens and the Nation and is surely NOT SUSTAINBALE over the long-run.
All this is just public relations.
Heard from a couple of old bird civil servants they have just been mobilised to attend elections training in mid-2010. This is good news for me — that means GE either during Sep holiday or year-end holiday.
So what you gonna do with the voting card with the serial number on it?! Show your guts and drive spurs into PAP or act like a ball-less cunt?
VOTE FOR CHANGE! VOTE OPPOSITION!!
Wow now the government is taking this lame obvious move? They must really be running out of moves.
Getting employers to foot the bill for a feel-good factor all around so that they can garner more votes for the elections?
So if any employers really do raise salaries, the government can claim credit for it and if the employers don’t raise salaries, the government can say they have done their part in trying to persuade employers to do so??? Isn’t that just purely lip service dependent on pure chance?
Such a low blow below the belt to the wallet just as a vote increasing gimmick.
To Sally, the graduate, who is looking for a job…
Too bad Sally we have idiots as economist…or perhaps PAP yes mans..
They are and will destroy, not our competitive nature alone but also our souls.
The timing of this wage rise seems like a complete BULL SHIT, when the rest of the world is fearing a serious crisis, again a crisis never seen before. This time in Europe.
My only thought is that, the PAP is planning an election and are doing their best to butter the ground, however, I must add, the egg might just land on the PAP faces.
I wonder where NWC guys went to school.
It is good news for those who get the wage rise, don’t get me wrong.
The timing is just pretty dangerous, right now.
ya sure, the ordinary workers of singapore need a recommendation to have a sustainable miserable increment, but the MIW team need a recommendation if NO 8.8% increment for them.
just like a blogger mentioned previously we ordinary soldiers need justification for promotion, but all the identified white horses included LHL need a justification if NOT promoted by super fast track.
you guys understand what i meant?
as if their salary increase is sustainable.
Just dont worry, the increase given to you will be offset very quickly. Right after election our helicopter brain ministers will chop off your gain. A line of price increasing is already in the pipeline waiting to flow when the time is right.
This little pork barrel is absolutely necessary knowing how bloody greedy Singaporean are. Never mind, they will be easily be bought over with a little goodies. Giving you pay rise, you will stop working hard and naturally turn to your old lazy ways. There is one hundred and one ways to skin you alive. Check out your price increase, it is computed to offset your increase in salary. LOL…. Come to the sum, you are watching the wizardry of our master mathematician who has everything inside the pocket already.
Our master supreme and helicopter thinking PAP will definitely beat you in every game. You are no match for our master supremacy. You the citizens of Singapore, remain as the biggest loser and always will be under the feet of our master PAP. LOL…. You are nobody and nobody is you.
SilenceIsGolden:
May 26, 2010 at 2:22 am
Wow he/she post again.
Wonder fate will always be good to him/her.
The day when he/she stop posting his/her advice
is the day we all know fate coming knocking on his/her door.
Fate sometimes can be very nice to person at the same super cruel to a person.
BTW I can feel something terrible will be going to hit us peasants.
sooner than we think. Prepare for the WORST.
Today
STI
2650.61
Holy shit
Already millions, 12 months discretionary bonuses and perks of free meals, travel and directorship, a pension till death and not to mention the private businesses they own. They are asking to raise their pay to $5M.
We have to cheapest fastest and best to let them continue to screw us for good.
Especially one who is only a lawyer and with mastery to “Repression – 1956″, “to tell lies till they become believe and become truth?”, etc. and another a Statistician who was also Finance Minister and gave someone a tight slap before becoming one?
Now, LSS is again JUST stating the OBVIOUS AND REPEATING about not being aware that “not all industries and enterprises would perform the same level”. Who doesn’t know this just with Common Sense? Isn’t this a GENERAL thing too! Need to be a highly “ed” or with “rocket science mind” to figure this out.
And NWC is another laughable one. Noting that workers are “swooned” (not the word used in the MSM) but the meaning is carried better with this word what they ACTUAL MEAN! 3-5% is “HUGE”? At 5% it’s only $50 per $1,000/- and only +$200/- a month or +$2,400 a year! After CPF and taxes HOW MUCH left? Of course they’ll say “Better than nothing” right!
Another Example: In yesterday’s TNP, both PTC & LTA responded to a Voices letter about the new public transport “Distance Fares” in July are yet undefined. In their closing statement they said that fares will be charged according to distance traveled “WITHOUT the transfers penalty Charge! Sound great hor! …..
What they tongue-in-cheeky “CHEEKY” officials of the harry genre DIDN’T SIMPLY SAY IS:
1. “Commuters will be charged more FOR the longer route they take WHEN THERE IS a shorter route to their destination”.
Q1.1 Isn’t this direct and a clearer explanation?
Q1.2 Has their “no transfer penalty” for psychological explanation advantage is a ploy WITHOUT transfer fares contra against distance charging instead?
Q1.3 Rates and “comparison details” with present transfer charges too?
2. “Senior citizens will be limited to 4 Km along with the fare increase of up to 73 cents from the present 68 & 69 cents for MRT & bus fares respectively. And beyond 4 Km they will be charge by Distance Traveled without transfer charges”.
Q2.1 What rates for senior’s distance charge after 4 Km?
Q2.2 Rates and “comparison details” with present transfer charges too?
You know folks, let’s all govt and govt “agency” replies give SELECTIVE Replies to psycho us into having a “subsidy” and new advantage? As why say so simplistically:
“Distance fares WITHOUT the transfer penalty”! See the “CATCH” word “penalty” for psychological steering and con? Isn’t telling 99% truth which gives and “opposite” impression akin to ALSO TELLING A LIE?
Here’s and example of this:
“A reporter reported that an archbishop spent a night in a motel in a small town with a woman”.
AREN’T you already assuming he committed adultery? Unless you KNOW THAT ONLY “Roman Catholic priests” ARE NOT allowed to get married! And this man wasn’t a RC but a protestant archbishop who is allowed to have a wife according to God’s will for man!
SEE THE “MALAISE” in the way that reporter SELECTIVELY reported information. Are NTUC, NWC, PTC, LTA, etc “pap” agencies also likewise? HOPE THAT WE ARE NOW THE “WISER” of harry’s statements on “Repression …. in 1956″ and of “Lies told often enough become truth”! That folks is call 50 years of “harryism”!
FAKE “Robin Hoods” robbing the productive and the poor to enrich themselves and foreigners abetting. They rob you via a lifetime of mortgage slavery and give you peanuts in your pockets expecting citizenry to say thank you.
Of course, their language of rhetorics are very limited and selective. Instead of “hypocritical” and “miniscule”, they substitute with that word “sustainable” as a put down and hold down of public expectation.
It used to be promising the earth and delivering next to nothing. Now in the internet age of public knowledge and exposure, it is less shameful to promise little and return even lesser still.
The political class is nothing less than an empty suit.
SilencesIsGolden is either a cynic of pap and posting in “double-negative” terms against them. Or he is that blatant “PR CITIZEN” one too. Take your pick from another angle of these? Or from yet another angle, he has toned down his “blatant cynic” support of pap. What do you and other folks think? And perhaps he is always indirectly being the the TR “cynic” also “spawning” more postings against pap too?
Can I humbly request for a 10% increase in wages?Cannot?8.8% also can lah!CANNOT?!!Hey Mr Lim Sia Sway!!Please tell the employers to wake up their ideas or I will complain to my MP about this!!Please tell the employers not to be daft!
“The National Wages Council recognises that not all industries and enterprises would perform the same level.”
MIW is justifying their own pay increase to be announced after the elections.
It’s not meant for you nor me.
We should dismantle the useless NWC.
I wonder why ministerial salary increase is not governed by NWC recommendation!!
good folks…there is always 2 sides to a story…the hyper link below is an eye opener or brain opener depending on one’s mental intuition and your own individual quiet conscience..
http://singaporeuncletrader.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/chris-hedges-we-are-spartah/
All the best good volks.
sturmtruppen:
May 27, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Thanx,good read.
but think maybe we need a few more hundred years b4 we can think like the greeks…maybe not.
the rich gets richer by making the poor poorer,as always.
and then,only GOD knows!
This is an election bait and gimmick. What value is 3% increase when CPF take away 1% and GST post-election is most likely to jump from 7% to 10% anyway.
GST WILL GO UP AS TAX FROM CORPORATE PROFIT SHRINKED BECAUSE SLOWER EARNING IN BUSINESS SECTOR and the Government cannot afford to run on deficit spending again. For those who had 20% or more paycut in 2009, what is 3% increase from that shrinked base, anyway?
Civil servants are in far better position. Some top earners got 10% cut last year but most unaffected by that cut will get a consolation of two closely-timed instalment payments for double-barrel reminder impact
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1059367/1/.html
It is ugly vote buying.
Look at the strategic restructuring in TH after August ( one month after the ex-gratia payment to civil servants), they are, together, clues the political class’s cynical efforts to sweeten the grounds before the election.
After the election, the,lightning will strike hard against the daft peasantry – higher GST, CEO,ERP, you name it, they are all ready for you.
Don’t be conned again.