Stew the canard, cook the migrant worker

The best moves in brand building and public relations are those where the audience is not even aware that they are being manipulated. It is the role of critical journalism to call it like it is, and draw people’s attention to it.

I suspect something like the former is going on with the sudden spurt of news stories about foreign workers and gambling. In this essay I am going to attempt to dissect the anatomy of it.

The issue burst into the headlines on Friday, 4 November 2011, when the Straits Times reported that some employers of foreign workers sent their employees to bet in casinos on their behalf.

Five bosses – some with exclusion orders against them – told The Straits Times that they have been handing workers cash, notebooks and mobile phones, then dispatching them to the casino.

They claimed to know several other employers doing the same thing.

The ‘proxy gamblers’, dressed mostly in company polo T-shirts and jeans, get a cut of the winnings, but if they lose too much, their pay is docked.

This arrangement allows employers who are barred due to their own excessive gambling a vicarious way to indulge their habit.

The others say it is a way to maximise their chances of winning at the slot machines or roulette tables.

— Straits Times, 4 November 2011, Bosses send foreign workers to gamble, by Elizabeth Soh.

The article goes on to describe how employers ferry the men to the casinos in their own flashy cars so that suspicions are not aroused, the workers are given seed money each day amounting to $500 – 800,  and the men’s bags are checked when they are picked up again at 10 p.m. after an entire day in the betting hall to ensure they have not hidden any winnings.

One employer told the newspaper:

Like many other investors, businessman Edmund Ng believes that ‘money grows money’.

But Mr Ng, 59, says his ‘investments’ are the foreign employees he sends to gamble on his behalf at the Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) casino.

The father of three described the process as ‘creative’ and ‘multiplying my chances’ of making money.

— Straits Times, 4 November 2011, ‘I’m giving my men a chance to get rich’

It does not sound as if he sees anything wrong about it.

The workers are said to have willingly agreed to do it, but I suspect closer interrogation may reveal a more complicated story. For example, many workers complain that while they may officially be employees of such-and-such a company, in fact the company has no work. The company loans the workers out to other companies on a day-by-day basis. (Yes, it does raise the question  how it is that companies with no projects can obtain Work Permits and bring in workers they don’t totally need).

Now, imagine this scenario: The boss tells his workers, ‘Tomorrow, I have no site to send you to, so I won’t be paying you since you guys are daily-rated.’ Then he offers the workers a choice, ‘But if you go to the casino and win, you will get 10 percent of the winnings. I will give you the money to go.’

How many workers will then say No?

(By the way, the men are not supposed to be daily rated. The Ministry of Manpower’s rules speak of a basic monthly salary, which any reasonable person would assume has to be paid whether or not an employer uses his workers productively. But, hey, that’s just another ministry rule that employers have blithely ignored for years and years with no penalty. The ministry prides itself as “employer-friendly”.)

Gambling counsellors were aghast when they heard about this practice of employers. They felt that the bosses were putting their workers in temptation’s way.

‘When they go into casinos it’s not just the gambling – the whole atmosphere, they might be enjoying it and want to go back to forget about their problems and the hardship they are facing,’ said consultant psychiatrist Tan Hwee Sim.

— Straits Times, 4 November 2011, Bosses send foreign workers to gamble, by Elizabeth Soh.

There was also something else I noticed in the story which showed how corrupting the whole thing has become.

Mr Leong, who is barred, said that he spends equal amounts betting on horse races, soccer games, and buying lottery tickets. He and his fellow sub-contractors avoid suspicion by getting their workers covered with medical certificates for the days spent at the casino.

‘If the manpower officials question me, I will just say my worker is ill and sneaked off to gamble – what can they say?’ said Mr Leong, whose company handles minor renovation work such as laminating floors and painting.

— Straits Times, 4 November 2011, Bosses send foreign workers to gamble, by Elizabeth Soh.

Does it not sound to you that the medical certificates are either fake or obtained dishonestly? Now, the medical profession is also being tainted.

* * * * *

The follow-up story on Day 2 couldn’t have pleased the employers who had spoken so freely to the Straits Times.

Responding to a report in The Straits Times yesterday, Minister of State for Manpower Tan Chuan-Jin said it was appalling and unacceptable for bosses to use their workers as proxy gamblers.

In a joint statement last night, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and the Ministry of Community Development, Youth, and Sports (MCYS) said the authorities met both casino operators yesterday, and they had agreed to step up checks at their premises. MOM is also checking if the contractors involved may have committed any offences.

The two ministries said they took a serious view of employers who use their workers as proxy gamblers.

— Straits Times, 5 November 2011, Bosses slammed for sending foreign workers to casinos, by Elizabeth Soh.

I am sure it is an offence. It’s called ‘illegal deployment’. Just as an employer of a domestic worker is not allowed to make her cut pineapples and wash water-melons at his fruit stall, a contractor is not allowed to use his workers as proxy gamblers.

* * * * *

By Monday however, the counter-offensive had begun. Employers and employment agents started to declare their concern over foreign workers’ welfare. They waxed lyrical about what they were doing to protect them from the big bad casino wolf.

More employers and recruitment agents are encouraging their foreign workers to apply for voluntary exclusion from the casinos before they arrive in Singapore, or as soon as they set foot here.

Some employers are even making it a hiring requirement.

These employers say foreign workers need to be ‘protected’ from the ills of gambling, since they do not have to pay the $100 casino entry levy which could otherwise act as a deterrent.

[snip]

Dr Ho Nyok Yong, president of the Singapore Contractors Association, said many of his member firms encourage casino exclusion.

‘Employers should take a paternalistic role towards the foreign workers,’ he said. ‘We should tell them that this is not a place to go… there are a lot of other places to go for entertainment.’

— Straits Times, 7 November 2011, More foreign workers urged to sign up for casino ban, by Amanda Tan

I find these protestations of concern rather hollow. This especially when tens of thousands of workers are housed in substandard accommodation. The two photos below (they are actually photos of photos) show you what I mean. The upper one has men cramped into an oven-hot shipping container. The lower one has three-tiered bunks with the lowest tier really the floor. Contractors’ concern would be more believable if their record of maltreatment in all other areas — salary arears, injury neglect, shocking accommodation — is not as deplorable as it has been.

You should see the counter-offensive for what it is — an attempt to shift the focus from errant employers to “irresponsible” workers. This diversionary tactic changes the conversation from the misdeeds of employers to the canard of how foreign workers are unable to control themselves.

But this duck (‘canard’ is French for duck) doesn’t fly. As John Gee, immediate past president of migrant workers’ welfare organisation, Transient Workers Count Too, told Yawning Bread, “In all my years working with foreign workers — and we handle 2,000 cases of destitute and abandoned workers a year — I have never come across a single case of a worker who became destitute from gambling.”

Someone else who also has long experience with foreign workers said likewise to the Straits Times:

Said Mr Jolovan Wham, executive director of migrant worker rights group Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (Home): ‘Why is there an assumption that all migrant workers will be gamblers? What is the extent of the problem such that we need to get them to sign it when they are still in their home countries?

— Straits Times, 7 November 2011, More foreign workers urged to sign up for casino ban, by Amanda Tan

Let me be blunt: This is a non-problem that someone is trying to make into an issue. In the process, more negative stereotypes of foreign workers are created, while the real culprits (employers addicted to gambling and putting workers in harm’s way) escape attention. In the process, the autonomy of foreign workers to decide for themselves whether they want to check out casinos, is circumscribed. We treat them like children without willpower. We justify to ourselves our “right” to control them.

I know of someone who has an even more interesting theory. With no evidence, it is impossible for me to say how true this is, but I’ve had enough experience in the background machinations of public relations to tell you, it’s quite a plausible theory. This someone thinks the underlying agenda is to “cleanse” the integrated resorts of foreign workers. Too many of them visiting would take their brands down-market. These workers don’t spend a lot of money in there, so the resorts don’t fully welcome them. Unfortunately, the operators cannot explicitly bar them from entering otherwise they’d be accused of racial or class discrimination, creating a controversy that would hurt their international brand image.

How timely it is, then, that others might do the banning for them. If the public can be made to believe that foreign workers are gambling addicts, regulatory measures that prohibit workers from visiting the integrated resorts would gain traction. The public may even believe they are doing the workers a service by banning them.

Indeed, the key question (other than contractors using their workers to gamble) is why is there such news froth over a non-existent problem? What better explanation for working ourselves up into a lather over an invisible throng of gambling-addict foreign workers?