The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Please, sir, may I have some more? Posted: 12 Oct 2011 05:04 PM PDT OCT 13 — In a disquieting corridor, a bunch of 17-year-olds milled about. We were waiting for our job interviews to join the Shangri-La banquet service. I had all my certificates with me, and was worried about the competition. The interviewers were not interested in any of my certificates; they just wanted to see if I could hear right and speak intelligibly. An actual sentence was strictly optional. And they took in most of us. It does knock you down a peg or two over what you think your education was worth. The next three months were just a series of mundane but labouring days, with pay day every fortnight. Living for the adrenaline on pay day, I was not sure if it came from being paid for physical labour, or just having money. There were hours, brisk and demanding. And in a perverse way, I was expecting the work to be as such. In my mind, these people were paying RM3 an hour, and they deserved all they can muster from us. It was gratitude for the money, without a sense of what the employer gets from the worker. No class in school covered the examination of work and just pay. Today, as Malaysia is preoccupied with unemployment, employment and gainful employment, the question of compensation for work is growing ever louder. Irrespective of how issue is discussed, what people absolutely need to get by, what people believe they deserve for the "work" they produce, what management is convinced employees deserve and pay-models an economy our size deserves — at the end what prevails is the reality. I'll start by defining work so that pay becomes objective to estimate. Work, stripped In the past, when economies were dominated by physical goods, things somewhat were easier. Take the highly labour-intensive rubber industry. The rubber tapper presents a quantity of rubber milk, which is then factored to prevailing unprocessed rubber prices and a payment rate is noted. There are the supervisors, the small office operations, the transportation vendor and cost of planting and caring for the rubber trees. The owner, the person generating the capital for the estate, takes the remaining chunk as profit, after paying his pound of flesh to the government of the day in taxes. Compare that today. The trinity of globalisation, information revolution and service industry outstripping the physical goods has incontrovertibly changed all industries, therefore forcing a rethink of the value of each person in a work chain. The rubber tappers are working half-weeks in Sepang, since much of their estates have either become the administrative capital or new development. Malaysia is a net importer of rubber, while remaining a major rubber manufacturer (10 per cent of the global condoms, no less). Issues like managing raw material supply, cross-border relationships, inventory, automating processes, quality control and others dominate. At least these managements can somewhat track contribution in the product chain. It becomes exponentially complicated for new industries like Internet set-ups. What is the actual worth of design to a website? Work and its definition will be a continuing conversation, which needs to be had periodically. In Malaysia, that conversation is further clouded by the growing elitism. Some of us are shut out of the conversation. The two ominous towers These are restive times for the blue-collared workers of Malaysia. The impending Employment Act followed by rare open opposition from the national labour union, coupled with the issue of too-low wages for the lower line employees in banking only underline the obvious: Workers are not getting a fair shake in Malaysia. As I said above, they are being shut out of the discussions to rationalise the value of work in all kinds of Malaysian industries, to not fight progress, but to fight for their own place in that progress. The old development model that generated jobs and prosperity for all by keeping wage rates tolerable for manufacturing firms has long evaporated. Today, everyone has to fend for themselves. And for big business, it is Christmas daily. Banks have expectedly, like most organisations, been outsourcing their non-core functions to other organisations. Local councils don't employ that many cleaners and garbage collectors; they contract out the work. Why is work contracted out? Outsourcing companies, like garbage collection services and supplying manufacturing labour, help bigger companies or organisations lower their operation cost by reducing their wage burden. It is all a tricky, slippery slope. Before outsourcing, large companies hire, plan work, provide healthcare and other benefits, and prove incentives, all of which cost money and are challenges. Passing the concern to outsourcing companies relieves them. Plus companies are then free of unionism, which is the domain of the blue-collar worker. However, these largely fly-by-night firms that don't have the good corporate citizen manual are not trying to build a brand name. They just want to maximise profits. The labour market is squeezed as much as possible. I am not arguing for the end of outsourcing, or forcing structures to businesses. They are entitled to do what they want within the law. Outsourcing is not the only means to cutting corners for the modern company. More the reason why workers have a right to collectively pursue their common goals, should these be opposed to their employers', the business climate, the laws or the government of the day. They should be able to make their arguments consistently, broadly and loudly so that they are in the room when decisions are made. Nature of work and capitalism is shifting daily, that is something all of us have signed up for as members of a globalised world. However, that does not mean only some parties have representation in the restructuring of work and, by natural extension, pay. Right now, workers are at the mercy of government policy. The second impediment to workers gaining more equitable pay in the Malaysian workplace is the growing elitism. In the command economy that is Malaysia, most economic activity is determined by government. The large firms on Bursa are either linked to the government or have benefitted from active policies, like power producers, developers, construction companies, etc. The MRT project is a walking example. The argument, then, is an unstated equation. These companies will hire aplenty, whether they need the numbers or not. In exchange, the Malaysian government is happy to note lower unemployment. The firms wished they were trimmer, so, to mitigate the situation, they constantly keep wage rates low for the blue-collar workers. Their summary is, they are hiring so many without having to, and these people do not decide if the firm profits. Business is decided by the small community of businessmen, politicians and technocrats. Relationships — not technical knowledge, capital or skilled labour — bring new business. That means, it is these people who should be paid most, and if those at the bottom of pyramid are paid less, should they not be glad they have jobs? So those are the two towers, the Khyber Pass barring intended wage rates from rising for the lower classes in Malaysia. Businesses are given carte blanche to protect their interests, and workers are encouraged to let the unrestricted free market get them a better pay and benefits. It is getting more and more pear-shaped for the blue-collar worker in Malaysia. Then the double whammy. The worth of companies is not being determined by workers; they are homogenous factors easily replaceable. It is all about the bosses and who they know. Therefore, they make the top bucks. At this rate, in the foreseeable future, the complete emasculation of the working class in Malaysia will happen. A powerless working community is historically a low-earning community. And in that future, a fair number of Malaysian will have to live on hope, not effort. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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