Progress Singapore Party’s (PSP) member Brad Bowyer took to Facebook on Thursday (22 October) to stress that failing to implement minimum wage in Singapore is going to be more costly for the country.
Mr Bowyer said this in response to what People’s Action Party (PAP) Edward Chia had recently pointed out in Parliament and Facebook.
Mr Chia, who owns food-and-beverage chain Timbre, asked the Workers’ Party (WP) in Parliament if they know that their plan to implement a minimum wage of S$1,300 for Singapore’s lowest-paid full-time workers could results in these low-wage earners to lose their jobs as businesses adapt more and there are more technological advances like automation.
When asked by WP’s chief Pritam Singh if he will be willing to pay S$1,300 monthly to the 32,000 lower wage earners in the country, Mr Chia responded by saying that business owners are answerable to the entire company and not just to a particular type of employee, and that a business should be profitable and scalable.
Reiterating his points in a Facebook post, the PAP MP said: “As a business owner, I would like to share that we all want to provide sustainable wages to our staff.”
He added, “Any wage increase needs to be couple with new skills, job redesign and transition capabilities such that both the company and the worker can immediately see value creation”.
To counter this, Mr Bowyer said in his post that salary for a basic job has nothing to do with the number of people doing it, or the skills required for the job, or any other factors.
“The pay for a basic job that needs doing in Singapore should have nothing to do with the number of people able to do it, the skill required to do or any other factor than it needs doing and there should be a minimum level of pay to survive in the place it needs doing… Period,” he noted.
He continued, “You can apply the skill, scarcity etc conversation to the higher level jobs so don’t confuse the issue.”
Minimum wage will help the country more
The PSP member went on to say that the Government cannot build a city that is the labelled as the most expensive in the world, yet treat the “needed workforce like they were living in mud huts with little costs to live there”.
“If you can’t automate or eliminate the job or get more value from one person through productivity measures then you should rightly pay a living wage and accept it as the basic cost/profit equation for the person who needs to do it,” Mr Bowyer opined.
He also said if Singapore doesn’t implement a minimum level living wage, then the country will continue to have “poor productivity, wealth gaps, corporate welfare policies through the back door like workfare and continued breakdown of civil society and the attendant ever increasing costs to stop it falling apart altogether.”
Mr Bowyer added, “A basic living wage gives stability, security, self reliance, self respect and a base from which those who want to or are able to can build from while removing the negative burdens of poverty from the nation.”
This is exactly why he thinks that not implement a minimum wage is going to be more costly for the country.
As such, he said that it’s time for Singapore to have “unselfish leadership and a broader and more holistic thinking on this issue”, and to forgo “narrow private profit driven narratives or excuses more reminiscent of the workhouses and similar of the industrial revolution.”
“Singapore is a country not a company and deserves better… It’s 2020 not 1820!” he concluded.
