Singapore Makes Firms Consider Citizens Before Hiring Foreigners
Singapore will impose new rules
prodding companies to consider locals before hiring foreigners
for professional jobs, according to the Ministry of Manpower.
The city state will set up a job bank where companies are
required to advertise positions before applying for so-called
employment passes for foreign professionals, it said. The
advertisements must be open to all Singaporeans.
“Even as we remain open to foreign manpower to complement
our local workforce, all firms must make an effort to consider
Singaporeans fairly,” Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin
said in a statement today. “‘Hiring-own-kind’ and other
discriminatory practices that unfairly exclude Singaporeans run
against our fundamental values of fairness and meritocracy.”
Singapore tightened restrictions on foreign workers for a
fourth straight year in February, in part because of voter
discontent over congestion, rising property prices and greater
competition for jobs and education. The curbs have led to a
labor crunch and rising wage costs for companies, which the
government has said will probably hurt growth in
Southeast
Asia’s only advanced economy.
Local Talent
Responding to feedback from Singaporeans that some
companies are hiring foreigners over citizens, Tan and Deputy
Prime Minister
Tharman Shanmugaratnam met with senior management
in a number of financial companies to emphasize that they should
make a concerted effort to develop a local talent pipeline, the
manpower minister said in Parliament in March.
“We must set expectations about what is acceptable and
what is not,” Tan said today. “It requires persuasion,
explanation and leading by example. The worst employers must be
taken to task.”
Singapore will also raise the minimum pay for employment-pass holders to S$3,300 ($2,600) a month in January, according
to the statement. The job bank will be set up by mid-2014, it
said. Companies with 25 or fewer employees will be exempt from
the new rules, as well as jobs that pay a fixed monthly salary
of S$12,000 or more, according to the statement.
The government will also identify firms “that have scope
to improve,” such as those with a lower concentration of
Singaporeans at the professional, managerial and executive
levels, compared to their peers, or those that have faced
nationality-based discriminatory complaints, the ministry said.
Foreign employment growth in Singapore slowed in the first
half of 2013 from a year earlier and the
labor market will
remain tight for the rest of 2013, the ministry said this month.
Singapore Foreigner Curbs Target Professionals: Southeast Asia
Singapore's Tan on Foreign-Worker Curbs
Singapore will widen foreign-worker curbs to professional jobs as the
government clamps down on companies that hire overseas talent at the
expense of citizens, stepping up efforts to counter a backlash against
immigration.
The Southeast Asian nation said yesterday it will set up a job bank
where companies are required to advertise positions to Singaporeans
before applying for so-called employment passes for foreign
professionals. The unprecedented policy will target jobs that currently
pay at least S$3,000 ($2,400) a month.
“There are concerns among
Singaporeans, which I think is fair, and so it’s timely for us to
introduce this,” Acting Manpower Minister
Tan Chuan-Jin
said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday. “There are
Singaporeans out there, well-skilled and capable, who are looking for
jobs and I think this step would actually facilitate that process.”
The
country is persisting with a four-year campaign to reduce its reliance
on foreign workers, after years of open immigration policy led to voter
discontent over increased competition for housing, jobs and education.
The move has led to a labor shortage and pushed up wages, prompting some
companies to seek cheaper locations.
“This is a step up from the government’s efforts to tighten the quality and the quantity of the foreign worker inflows,” said
Chua Hak Bin,
an economist at Bank of America Corp. in Singapore. “We’re moving to
another phase now where they’re looking to ensure that opportunities for
the middle-income Singaporeans are maintained.”
Better Matching
Singapore
will also raise the minimum pay for employment-pass holders by 10
percent to S$3,300 a month in January, the Ministry of Manpower said in a
statement
yesterday. The job bank will be set up by mid-2014, it said. Companies
with 25 or fewer employees will be exempt from the new rules, as well as
jobs that pay a fixed monthly salary of S$12,000 or more, the ministry
said.
“It makes a lot of sense to hire locally from the
communities that we operate in,” said Audrey Tan, a Singapore-based
spokeswoman for Pratt & Whitney, the jet-engine unit of United
Technologies Corp., where Singaporeans make up 75 percent of its more
than 2,000 workforce in the city.
The nation’s
unemployment rate rose to 2.1 percent in the second quarter, with the resident jobless rate at about 3 percent.
That
“translates to 50,000, 60,000 Singaporeans without jobs,” Tan, the
minister, said. “What the regime allows is that there may be a better
matching of demand and supply” between companies and job-seekers, he
said.
Fewer Locals
The government will also identify
firms “that have scope to improve,” such as those with a lower
concentration of professional Singaporeans compared with industry peers,
or those that have faced nationality-based discriminatory complaints,
the ministry said.
Responding to feedback from Singaporeans that some companies are hiring foreigners over citizens, Tan and Deputy Prime Minister
Tharman Shanmugaratnam
met with senior management in a number of financial companies to
emphasize that they should make a concerted effort to develop a local
talent pipeline, the manpower minister said in Parliament in March.
Citigroup Inc., which has about 10,000 employees in Singapore, said citizens and permanent residents make up 82 percent of its workforce.
‘Right Balance’
“It is essential that we strike the right balance,”
Adam Rahman,
a Singapore-based spokesman at the bank, said in an e-mail. “It is
important to have some foreign talent who have global perspectives,
expertise and skills to complement the overall development of Singapore
as an international financial hub.”
Standard Chartered Plc,
which has 7,600 employees in the city, said it will study the impact of
the framework, which it expects will create more opportunities for
locals. “The new portal will provide greater transparency and continue
to promote fairness in hiring processes,” Peter Hatt, head of human
resources for Singapore and Southeast Asia, said in an e-mail.
Singapore
was ranked the most-favored expat destination based on economic factors
such as income and housing in a 2012 survey of more than 100 countries
released by
HSBC Holdings Plc. Including the criteria of lifestyle and well-being of children, Hong Kong topped the list.
Second Choice
“Hong
Kong and Singapore vie for talent on an ongoing basis,” said Marc
Burrage, regional director of Hays Plc in Hong Kong. “If these changes
are going to make it harder for expats to find work in Singapore, then
what that could mean is that people will start to consider Hong Kong
whereas in the past it may have been their second choice in Asia.”
Singapore’s
inflation rate
quickened to 2 percent in August. Domestic cost pressures are expected
to persist amid continuing tightness in the labor market, the central
bank and the trade ministry said in a statement yesterday.
“Further tightening on foreign labor participation should place upward pressure on wages and therefore core inflation,” said
Daniel Wilson, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore.
The
city’s population has jumped by more than 1.1 million since mid-2004 to
5.3 million, driven by immigration. A proposal to boost the population
to 6.9 million by 2030 prompted thousands to protest in February.
The framework “is designed to placate the electorate,” said Lee Quane, Hong Kong-based regional director at
ECA International,
which provides research on employment, relocation and compensation.
“The impact is going to be negligible. Singapore has almost full
employment.”
The city studied employment policies in markets
including Hong Kong, the U.S. and U.K. before developing its framework,
the minister said.
“We’re very mindful that there’s no one silver
bullet that solves everything and we’re also mindful that every country
has their own slightly different circumstances,” Tan said.
Contributed by By Sharon Chen Bloomberg
