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01/05/2008
Singapore's - A Day Off Campaign
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What is the campaign all about ?
Over 170,000 migrant women come to Singapore to work as Foreign domestic workers. 1 in 6 families hire a foreign domestic worker (FDW). Most come from Philippines and Indonesia but there are also FDWs from Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and India. They are vulnerable to being exploited due to their poor economic backgrounds, lack of education and displacement from their communities.
Too many FDW are deprived of basic human and labor rights. The Day off Campaign aims to improve the situation for domestic workers in Singapore. Why a ‘Day Off’?
The key message of this campaign is an appeal to employers to ‘Give your Maid a regular day off’.
A Sunday Times poll in 2003 revealed that only half of FDWs have a regular day off. And of those who do get a day off, only a lucky minority receive one day off a week.
We believe a day off is important because of the following reasons:
1. A day off is a basic Labour Right. Domestic Workers are not currently included in the Singapore Employment Act that guarantees a day off a week by law for other employees.
2. A day off improves morale and productivity of the employee and the working relationship between employer and employee
3. A day off gives FDWs the opportunity to use their free time to learn new skills, acquire knowledge and be empowered as individuals
4. FDWs are productive individuals who make an extremely valuable contribution to Singaporean society and like any other worker, they should be accorded a day off
Who is behind this campaign?
The campaign has been created and is being delivered by three partner organizations namely, UNIFEM Singapore, Home & TWC2
Each organization is working in partnership to reach as many people as possible with information about what they can do to help improve the lives of domestic workers.
29th April 2008 press release (pdf).
Sign the support list.
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Comments
I fully support the purpose of the campaign. I do not support mandatory day's off by law, which interfere with the employer-employee relationship. For e.g. it may be necessary for the maid to work a particular Sunday because the family has activities (like a party, which often falls on Sunday).
What is more effective than laws is social acceptance and ostracism. How fantastic it would be to vilify those employers (entire families even) who treat their maids like chattel. Someone could even start a website: SingaporeSlaveDriver dot com. We need more "village square justice" and less laws. The State is always involved in laws. It is UNINVITED to the events where citizens are able to self-organise and solve their own problems.
Posted by: Matilah_Singapura | 02/05/2008
Hi Matilah-singapore
"It is UNINVITED to the events where citizens are able to self-organise and solve their own problems."
for a second there I thought you might be advocating that domestic workers form some sort of 'collective' maybe even a 'trade union'. You'll be calling for social ism next. ;)
And are domestic workers technically 'citizens' in Singapore?
Posted by: soci | 02/05/2008
Socialism: I'll define it 2 ways--
1) The collective or state ownership and allocation of resources, including human resources.
2) A political ideology based on the philosophy "from each according to his abilty, to each according to his need", establishing "need" as a standard of value.
This is NOT what I am advocating -- which I know makes Sweet F-All difference in the grander scheme of things, as socialism is a very popular ideology.
As a card-carrying (Aust) union member for the last 25 years, let me state that IMO there is nothing wrong with unions per se. Collective bargaining is a good idea, but in Bloody Singapore the PAP have taken that right away and arbitrality forced a govt-controlled union-- the NTUC-- on S'pore workers. In S'pore it is ILLEGAL to strike, and this is fully supported by the NTUC. So much for collective bargaining then.
When unions exert POLITICAL FORCE and start their militant nonsense like beating up "scabs" and picketing on, and destroying private property -- property which they don't own -- then unions become dangerous tyrants. Unions who use force to coerce people to join are also violating individual rights, because they are interfere with VOLUNTARY choice and the freedom of association.
I do however fully endorse the idea of labour strikes -- the withdrawal of one's labour services, for one's own personal reasons. When people unite to do this voluntarily, it can be powerful leverage.
In the late 80's, Australia's most famous union leader, the then Australian Labour Party PM Bob Hawke showed the world what a hypocrite he was during the Aust airline pilots strike. Hawk was even condemned by traditionally "anti union" conservative groups for behaving like a 3rd world tin-pot FASCIST dictator, using pilots from the Royal Australian Airforce (tax payers money), and then by pro-actively assisting the airlines to recruit pilots from overseas.
It would be great if FDW's did organise. I support that idea. My argument is that if you speak of "economic freedom" and "freedom of labour" movement across borders, then that freedom ought to be UNIVERSAL. It doesn't matter whether or not the FWD's are citizens or not. They have every right, individually, to determine HOW they are to be treated and freely negotiate (without state intervention) the terms of exchange for their labour services.
This is more in line with free market principles, rather than the sometimes "fake free market" principles practiced by the Fascist People's Action Party.
Posted by: Matilah_Singapura | 04/05/2008