Copyright 2004 New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad

August 21, 2004, Saturday

SECTION: Saturday forum; Wavelength; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 546 words

HEADLINE: Need to re-think our labour policies and laws

BYLINE: By John Teo

BODY:
A SMALL-TIME contractor with just two full-time masons under his charge
recently agonised over whether to accept a fresh job offer to renovate a
house.

He has been held "hostage" by his two employees and other associates he
has to rely on - electricians, plumbers and roofing specialists - to the
extent that his current job has already taken double the time he had
estimated for completion.

This small-time entrepreneur has been laid low by the antics of workers
who show up only when they please, knowing full well that their employer
needs them probably more than they need the employer. The tight local
labour market is such that experienced construction workers never have to
fear losing a job.

The harrowing experience of this one employer is sadly not an isolated
one. It is one that is played out right across the economy and makes moot
whether all the government-initiated blandishments thrown the way of the
nation's small- and medium-sized enterprises are really on-target.

As we hear of another impending mass deportation of illegal foreign
workers, perhaps there is urgent reason anew to re-think the whole gamut
of our labour policies and laws.

An economy that relies so heavily on foreign labour cannot be a healthy
one. For the sake of its long-term sustainability, attacking the problem
of illegal foreign workers will be treating one symptom without attending
to the far more serious problem that lies at the root of the national
economy - that of the legal labour supply.

Creative solutions need to be found to the country's labour supply
problem which will progressively but gradually phase out dependence on
cheap foreign labour.

No doubt employers resort to foreign labour - in the more desperate
cases, even to illegal foreign labour - to answer immediate and pressing
needs.

Unless and until new labour policies are in place and their
implementation phased in to allow employers and employees adequate time to
adjust, industry as a whole will inevitably fall for the easiest solutions
that answer its needs here and now. This is why the relative ease of
getting cheap, unskilled foreign labour will ultimately not do the overall
economy any favours.

As the nation reflects on a possible "silver bullet" to its dire labour
situation, the time may really have arrived for us to, as recently
suggested, look into the idea of implementing a minimum wage regimen.

This may prove just the right incentive for the floating population of
the unemployed and underemployed local workers to seriously think about
entering one or another sector of the formal economy.

Coupled with an officially mandated progressive drying-up of the supply
of cheap foreign labour, employers will also be discouraged from looking
out for easy alternatives to their labour requirements and instead seeing
their workers as investments in which employers need to regularly re-
train, upgrade productivity and adequately reward in order to retain.

Failing this, employers will need to increasingly turn to labour-saving
automation.

With carefully thought-through policies imbued with a realistic vision,
the Government can make an inevitable exercise less painful for employers
and more attractive to local workers.

LOAD-DATE: August 24, 2004