Tony Abbott's plebiscite

[Sintiger]

There is minimum wage in Singapore for FDW. Indonesian Maids are $300 SGD pm. Filipino are officially USD $600 but no one enforces that.

Included in that is lodgings, food, daily necessities etc etc.

It's a bit of an eye opener when you get here. There is now max working hours so quite a few are expected to work long hours and 7 days a week.

Then society starts to have a reliance on FDW. Nearly every man and his dog has one and life becomes difficult without that extra pair of hands. Any attempt to enforce minimum wage or minimum days off a month is met with a massive resistance from the population.

On top of that, all building sites you Bangladeshi labour. Same sort of salary and lv=iving conditions, except they tend to live in the building site.

I lived in Singapore for many years Baloo and it looks like things have changed a bit since I left . I was not aware of any minimum wage for Filipina amahs .
Whats is the Government levy now , it used to be $325 a month .
the eye opener for me was the first week i was there looking over at an apartment block across the street and seeing a maid hanging out of a window washing the outside of the glass .

 

[Baloo]

Leaning out of the windows to wash the glass is frowned upon these days. I think there may even be a fine associated with it.

About the same levy, around $350 I think.

While the embassy has instituted the USD$600 minimum, it's unworkable and embassy know that. If they were to enforce it most people would ditch them for other nationalities which isn't what the embassy nor the FDW workers want.

 

[Brodders17]

geez, it looks like this thread has been taken over by abbott fans! everyone is doing their best to take attention off abbotts stupidity.
interesting too that the coalition voted in favour of a class war and voted for the freeze on the indexation of family tax benefit supplements.

 

[mld]

The Filipinos who work overseas don't get their arms twisted mld , they do it because they want to improve the position of their families at home even though they know what the cost is. It couldn't happen here though because places like Hong Kong , Singapore and various Middle eastern countries where these people work allow them to be paid wages well below the norm which we wouldn't allow. A domestic maid in Singapore or Hong Kong is probably paid around $300-400 a month only.

I am not making a value judgement on it just stating a fact that our minimum wage laws make that impossible.

So, as I said, let them come here. Open it up.