Part 3: Working hours in the East vs the West

This is part 3 in a 3-part series - if you have surfed here directly, may I direct you please to start at:
Part 1: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/responding-to-on-oz-vs-sg-debate-part-1.html
Part 2: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/part-2-cost-of-eating-out-singapore-vs.html

Here's an interesting one - 小凤仙 thinks that Singapore is better off without those who wish to knock off at 5 pm to spend time with their friends and family instead of working over time till 9 or 10 pm. Allow me to quote him/her from the original article, "However, if there is any Singaporean that does not want to work hard (especially to request for work to end by 5pm), this may be a signal that the end of Singapore is near. For this category of Singaporeans, it may not be a big lost should they leave for another country to work till 5pm." Whilst there is the obvious argument about one's lifestyle choices, I am going to apply some mathematics to it as this is a situation facing Korean, Taiwanese, HK and Japanese workers as well.

How often do you work overtime?

I have recently seen a documentary on the BBC exploring the problems facing the Japanese economy. They looked at the working conditions of young Japanese people who do have jobs, but are expected to put in ridiculously long hours to satisfy their demanding bosses. If they refuse to put in the long (unpaid, overtime) hours, then the usual reply is, "Fine, quit then. I have so many other young people who are willing to do your job - just leave and I will be able to find a replacement for you within a day." A similar culture exists in Singapore where workers are afraid to complain about long hours because they know they can be easily replaced with a foreign worker who will not complain about the overtime.

How serious is this situation in Singapore? Readers, please, you tell me. I am told horrific stories from Singapore - such as my sister who told me her story. "I would come home from work, have dinner with my family and spend at least an hour with my son - I look forward to that hour as I would relax by playing with him. Once I put my son to bed at about 10 pm, I take out my laptop and catch up with work. I usually do not finish until at least 2 am, sometimes 3 or 4 am if there are deadlines to meet. This is normal. There have been times when I go without sleep, because I have to leave home at about 7:15 am to make it to the office by around 8 am. Work starts officially at 9 am but everyone gets in early just to get a head start. Sometimes, when it gets to like 5 am - I just look at the clock and think, what's the point? I am going to get less than 2 hours of sleep and will end up feeling even more tired when I wake up again. The worst part is when I look out of the window and I see the sky start to change colour, that's when you know the night is over, dawn has arrived and I realize that I've gone another night without sleep."

What is your workload like?

I used to think that my sister's situation is rare - then another old school friend told me he faces pretty much the same routine. Last year, I was supposed to meet him for dinner at 7 pm. He then called me and moved it to 9 pm, then 10 pm and by 10:30 pm he was like, "look, I need to go out to see one of my clients, if you don't mind tagging along?" You see, he supplies promotional materials for the shopping malls of Singapore so he often meets his clients (ie. the people who run the mall) either before the malls open in the morning or late at night after they've shut the mall. And I was like, "are you seriously telling me you have someone who is willing to meet you at 11 pm at night?" He replied, "Oh yeah, I have even had meetings at 1 am." So I met him at Centrepoint where his company was putting up some banners and posters and I chatted with his workers whilst he had his meeting with his client. I asked his workers, "do you guys usually work this late?" And they were like, "Oh we cannot put up the promotional material when the mall is open, so we either do it very late at night or very early in the morning. This is pretty normal."

Walking around Centrepoint after 11 pm, I saw that the mall was anything but dead - there were still plenty of staff in the shops, cleaning, restocking the shelves, having meetings. It was unreal for me, for I could never imagine a mall in Britain being so busy this late at night. I was just thinking, don't these people want to go home to their families or get some sleep? Why are they working so late? My friend finished his meeting and then said, "I feel so bad keeping you waiting, let me take you out for supper." He took me to one of those 24 hour places and by the time we got there, it was midnight and the place was still in full swing, serving workers who have just finished work and were getting dinner at midnight. Like, is this normal? I know Singaporeans work hard, but dinner at midnight?

Yes I had the chance to see what Centrepoint was like after 11 pm!

Okay, let's try to make sense of this and put some numbers to it. If an Australian worker works from 9 am to 5 pm with one hour for lunch, then that's 7 working hours a day. If a Singaporean worker works from 9 am to 9 pm (yeah let's use 9 pm as a cut off rather than midnight, that's just too extreme) with only half an hour for a quick lunch, then that's  11.5 hours a day. Furthermore, Singaporeans always work on Saturdays and sometimes on Sundays (even if it means working from home to catch up on work you have not finished in the week). So in total, an Australian would put in 7 x 5 = 35 hours a week and rarely ever work on the weekends (neither do I, call me lazy if you want, but weekends are for relaxing). Whilst a Singaporean can easily chalk up over 70 hours a week if he worked 9 to 9 on weekdays + 12.5 hours spread out over the weekend.

By that token, an Australian work week is 35 hours whilst a Singaporean work week is 70 hours! That's double and it is not unusual at all. The irony is that 小凤仙 evens admits it in his/her article, "I’m disturbed by the author’s comments on the working hours in Singapore. Singapore is a resource scarce nation. To survive, Singaporeans may have to work doubly hard. This has been our hallmark of success since independence."

So if you're being paid $1000 a week, in Australia, that works out to be $28.57 an hour whilst in Singapore, that is $14.28 an hour. The Singaporean worker may enjoy the same status, job title and even the same salary on paper - but when you break it down into how much they are paid per hourly, then the Australian is paid far more than the Singaporean. Given the long hours Singaporeans put in, there is no way they can match their Australian counterparts in terms of how much they are paid per hour unless they demand to be compensated for overtime - which is rarely the case in Singapore.

Have you worked out how much you are paid an hour?

And wait, it gets far worse for you Singaporeans. On average, you Singaporeans get 12 to 14 days paid leave a year whilst in Australia, they get four weeks a year - whilst public servants receive up to five weeks a year of paid leave! Oh and in Singapore, you have 10 days of public holiday a year - in Australia, it varies from state to state but they get between 12 to 16 days of public holiday a year. Boy things are not looking good for you Singaporeans, are they? Given that I am a geek with numbers, let's break it down even further!

In Australia, if a public servant works 52 - 5 = 47 weeks a year and we can discount 14 days public holdays, that's 47 - 2 = 45 weeks a year. If he puts in 38.5 hours a week (what is considered a standard working week in Australia), that's 1732.5 hours a year - without even considering other things like time off for compassion, sickness leave, maternity/paternity leave etc (all of which are far more generous than in Singapore). So 1732.5 is the number of match. Let's look at the situation in Singapore.

Your Singaporean counterpart works 52 - 2 = 50 weeks a year, then we discount 10 days public holiday (call that 1.5 weeks), that makes it 48.5 weeks a year. If he puts in 70 hours a week, then 70 x 48.5 = 3395 hours a year in Singapore. Ouch. That's about double. Think of all the hours when the Australian is on the beach, at the movies, playing tennis, enjoying quality time with his family whilst his Singaporean counterpart is stuck in the office. We're not just talking about one year - we're actually talking about your entire working life. Oh dear.

"I'm leaving the office at 5 pm as I have my diving lesson this evening."

Let's compare the graduate starting salary in Singapore vs that in Australia. In Singapore, the starting salary for those with honours is on average S$2777 a month - that makes it 2777 x 12 = S$33,324 a year. Not bad, you may say? In Australia however, starting salaries are A$49,000 for graduates, but in certain industries such as mining, that rises to A$80,000. Oh and that's in Australian dollars, in Singapore dollars, that converts to S$61,538 starting salaries for graduates and up to S$100,472 for mining graduates.

This is when I am going to stick in the knife and twist it a few times to make you Singaporeans feel even more pain - this may get me some hate mail, but fuck it it'll be worth it to knock some of you Singaporeans back down to earth and erode your ridiculous sense of superiority. We're not done yet with the comparison.

Fresh graduate in Singapore
S$33,324 for 3395 hours of labour a year = S$9.81 per hour
Ouch, that's £4.98 an hour, that's below minimum wage in the UK (£6.19 per hour) - so your fresh graduate in Singapore is paid less an hour than a road sweeper or someone cleaning the toilets in the UK. 

Fresh graduate in Australia
S$61,538 for 1732.5 hours of labour a year = S$35.52 per hour.

Australian graduates are paid a lot more than their Singaporean counterparts.

Good grief. So that's $35.52 vs $9.81 an hour. We're not talking about Australians being marginally better off, no! Australians are 3.62 times better off than Singaporeans because of this supposedly "lazy" aspect of their culture of knocking off at 5 pm and working on average 38.5 hours a week. Hmmm. Yet they somehow get paid so much more than Singaporeans on a per hourly basis - somehow I think Australians are the smarter ones. If you can get paid more for doing less work, who wouldn't want that? Essentially, you're fucked Singaporeans. You are so fucked by your system. It's incredible how some Singaporeans resort to blatant racism, calling Australians 'lazy' when they are oblivious to how fucked up the Singaporean system is and how Singaporeans are suffering as a result!

You may argue that Australians pay more tax, but even if taxes were to bring Australian salaries down to Singaporean levels - that means paying 61,538 - 33,324 = $28,214 in taxes - which is 45.8% (rather than about 15% which is what one would expect to pay on an annual income of A$49,000) - you're still faced with the fact that your Australian is putting in far less hours than your Singaporean counterpart for the same amount of money. So even if the salaries are the same (they are not, Australians are paid more), the quality of life is remarkably different when you compare a 38.5 hour vs a 70 hour working week.

Even after taxes, Australians are still much better off financially!

Many Singaporeans will argue that Singapore has a much higher GNP per capita than Australia (or whatever measure you want to use, be it PPP or GDP etc) - that may be true, but you cannot ignore the fact that there is a huge disparity of wealth in Singapore. There is a an elite class of super wealthy Singaporeans whose lifestyles are nothing like your typical Singaporeans in the HDB heartlands - statistically, they pull the average up by a very long way but your typical Singaporean from somewhere like Ang Mo Kio, Toa Payoh or Choa Chu Kang is hardly enjoying the fact that Singapore has a higher GNP per capita than Australia when they look at how much money they have. Oh but hey, they can feel rich when they look at their CPF statements.

I am one of those lazy sods who barely works 35 hours a week most of the time. Some weeks, I put in less than 30 if I can help it. When I am not working, I am pursuing my other interests such as studying foreign languages (I am currently studying Welsh and Korean), doing sports (I still do a lot of gymnastics and diving), socializing with friends, blogging, pursuing my interests in media and of course, getting more sleep. Feel free to insult me, call me lazy, but if I can earn this much money by putting in so few hours a week, then perhaps there is an element of "work smart" vs "work hard" at play here. If you're slogging long hours, putting in 70+ hour weeks but still getting paid less than the the lazy sod like me, then perhaps it's time to look at your strategy and try to figure out why you are getting paid so little an hour.

Are you working hard or working smart? 

This reminds me of when I was a child - I frustrated the hell out of my parents. Not because I was a bad student, but I refused to study. I was too busy being playful, doing sports and having fun with my friends instead of studying. You could call me lazy, playful or both - and it'll be completely true. Despite barely studying, I still somehow excelled academically and managed to get three scholarships along the way (including one for my degree at a top British university). My Chinese parents believed that in denying myself the pleasure of fun & games and choosing to embrace hard work (ie. sitting down and revising for exams), this would develop my character - whatever that meant. I think for them, it was far more simplistic. If I was at home, in my bedroom, revising for my maths exams, then I was not out there in the streets with my friends, getting into trouble. It is a very Asian, very old fashioned attitude towards hard work, that someone it must be always good for you.

Whilst this may be a default position taken by many Asian parents, when it comes to the practical aspects of establishing a good work life balance, working smart counts far more than working hard. Look, I've spent years in competitive gymnastics, I know all about hard work, discipline sacrifice and perseverance. It was also threw sports that I knew the difference between working hard and working smart. So much of gymnastics depends on applying the right techniques when training complex skills - take a skill like a double back somersault for example. If you do not use the right technique to take off properly, there is no way you can complete the two rotations and land on your feet. Have a look at this video below. Even if this guy keeps on working hard, he will never land this double back somersault properly unless he works smart and improves his technique. Crikey, it is amazing he actually got up and walked away unhurt after crashing so hard on his head like that.

So there you go, let me know what you think about the issue. If you are a Singaporean, would to care to share with us how many hours you work a week on average? Leave a comment below, thanks!