Increasing cleaners’ pay – No Action, Talk Only?

Yet another new scheme to help cleaners?

I refer to the article “New accreditation scheme for cleaning firms from next month” (Straits Times, Oct 19)

It states that “One day after a tripartite group set basic starting salaries for cleaners, the Government announced on Friday that cleaning firms must sign on to a new accreditation scheme before they can tender for government contracts from April next year.

The Enhanced Clean Mark scheme, which adds more criteria to an existing voluntary Clean Mark Accreditation scheme, will be rolled out from next month.

The move is aimed at raising professional standards in the cleaning industry as well cleaners’ wage prospects, said Second Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Grace Fu.

“In order to professionalise itself, the industry has to incorporate good practices to upgrade the skill levels of the workers… and systematise work processes,” she said on the sidelines of a visit to a cleaning firm. The enhanced scheme was an “important step” towards raising the standards of the cleaning industry, she added.”

Over the years, there have been so many initiatives and schemes to raise the pay of cleaners – “productivity enhancement”, “best out-sourcing”, “town councils’ cleaners’ scheme”, “progressive wage concept”, and now a new enhanced scheme to replace the Clean Mark Accreditation Scheme.

Pay still very low?

However, despite all these – “Currently, cleaners in these positions earn between S$675 and S$950” (“10,000 cleaners set to get pay increases“, Channel NewsAsia, Oct 18).

How much longer do cleaners have to wait?

Participation in the new accreditation scheme is voluntary, but from April 1 next year, firms bidding for government contracts must be accredited, which aims for cleaners to be well trained and managed, and fairly paid.

So, since the scheme is only effectively from April 1 next year, how much longer will cleaners have to wait in in order to get “fairly paid”?

Another failed scheme?

Since only 61 of the 910 cleaning firms are accredited under the current scheme, it may clearly have been a failure.

So, will the new scheme work from the perspective of increasing cleaners’ pay significantly?

What is there to prevent a cleaning company from operating as two cleaning companies – one accredited and the other not, so as to pay lower wages to some cleaners?

Will this new scheme end up to be yet another “half-baked” scheme to increase cleaners’ pay?

66% of cleaners are locals

We have been told repeatedly over the years that Singaporeans do not want to work as cleaners. If this is true, then why is it that 46,000 of the 70,000 cleaners in the industry are locals?

Pay increase by how much and when?

Perhaps the only “real” talk that we need is how much and when the basic hourly pay of all cleaners will increase, instead of yet some more gibberish statements like “For a start, it wants to help about 10,000 cleaners in these sub-sectors earn a higher entry-level basic wage of between S$1,000 and S$1,200” and “These guidelines, made by a group of officials from unions, cleaning firms and the Government, propose a new pay structure for cleaners categorised into three groups – those who clean offices; HDB estates; and hawker centres or foodcourts. Minimum basic monthly starting pay is set at $1,000”.

In this connection, just four months ago, the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) announced its progressive wage concept initiative to raise the wages of 10,000 cleaners to at least $1,000 a month by 2015 (‘NTUC to raise wages for cleaners”; Straits Times, Jun 22).

So, is NTUC now hastily revising its $1,000 pay target to 1 April next year or earlier?

40%+ drop in real pay?

The median gross wage for cleaners and labourers was $1,277 in 2000 (‘Mindset change needed to help low-wage workers’; Straits Times, Feb 7).

After adjusting for inflation, even attaining the target of $1,000 now may mean a decline of more than 40 per cent in real pay in year 2000 dollars.

By the way, since the monthly cleaning fees that some hawkers pay will increase by as much as 156 per cent, from $240 to $614, the question that may be on everyone’s mind is how much will the pay of the cleaners in these food centres increase? (“Hawkers hit out at hike in cleaning fees“, Straits Times, Sep 27).

Perhaps we should focus on increasing the pay of cleaners first, instead of coming out with some more new accreditation and training schemes, which may substantially increase the costs of cleaning companies.

Leong Sze Hian