Workplace power in Singapore: a paradox? Evidence from a 1998 national survey

Abstract

Singapore workers are reputed to be highly disciplined, diligent, skillful, productive, and cooperative. In a tight labour market, though, they are likely to manifest organisational disloyalty and are given to job-hopping. Almost a quarter of all workers in Singapore are members of unions affiliated to the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), the sole confederation of labour unions in Singapore. The NTUC operates in close partnership with the state and adopts a productionist orientation. This paper is based on data from the Social Indicators Research Project (SIRP) survey completed in 1998 in the midst of the Asian economic crisis. It focuses on four crucial indicators-job dimensions, union orientations, job satisfaction, and turnover propensity-to get a sense of how Singapore workers fare in terms of morale, quality of work life, and workplace power. This approach sees labour not as a mere factor of production, passively subject to market forces and managerial decisions which are oriented towards profits, but as a social actor with the potential and capacity to influence the conditions that affect work life. The paper observes that while executive-level employees enjoy greater job autonomy than rank-and-file workers, their greater dependence on senior management for extrinsic rewards and career prospects and their lack of access to union membership have rendered them somewhat less powerful than rank-and-file workers vis-à-vis their employing organisations. The paper also argues that while Singapore unions are productionist in orientation and non-adversarial towards capital and management, they can serve as a deterrent against oppressive company policies or victimisation by managers. This is a benefit accessible to rank-and-file workers, but less so to their executive-level counterparts. Show more