SC application approved

[singaporeflyer]

It said you are welcome to stay on your existing pass

Just highlighting this for all the "kiss of death" believers out there.

This happened for me too. But I wanted to highlight there were significant changes in my application before I reapplied again. No one here said it is impossible, all that was said here was it is very tough and so don't be highly hopeful.

[BBCWatcher]

I'm just disagreeing with the idea that there's a Food and Beverage industry stigma among Singaporeans starting or progressing through their careers. If there is a stigma it's lack of financial success, generally. I don't see any F&B sector-specific stigma nowadays.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Maybe you should get out more. Talk to some people who do recruitment as to how hard it is to find people to work in the F&B food service sector. I was a recruiter for 10 years. I still have a huge number of contacts with those in the industry.

This was never about those trying to start a F&B enterprise, it was about F&B employees, not employers. Good example is our former regular, Saint. He opened "The Juban Stand" on Boat Quay. We supported him in our private gatherings for a year or two but eventually he had to call it a day like most do as they could not get locals to work, and MOM had curbed the hiring of foreigners in that sector so he had to close it up. This is a problem across the full spectrum of the industry - employee staffing. Everybody and his brother wants to open a bar or restaurant, but while F&B venues are created at a rate of around 2 a day (according to ACRA) they are closing down just about as rapidly due to various reasons, and one big reason is lack of local staff willing to work in the industry and the inability to hire foreign staff with MOM's cutbacks.

[sundaymorningstaple]

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/at-this-sing ... 46644.html

[ecureilx]

This was never about those trying to start a F&B enterprise, it was about F&B employees, not employers.
..
Everybody and his brother wants to open a bar or restaurant, but while F&B venues are created at a rate of around 2 a day (according to ACRA) they are closing down just about as rapidly due to various reasons, and one big reason is lack of local staff willing to work in the industry and the inability to hire foreign staff with MOM's cutbacks.

+1

[BBCWatcher]

Maybe you should get out more. Talk to some people who do recruitment as to how hard it is to find people to work in the F&B food service sector. I was a recruiter for 10 years. I still have a huge number of contacts with those in the industry.

We're talking past each other, SMS.

It's hard to get Singaporean resident workers (or any other workers) to work for relative peanuts, agreed. Easy solution: raise wages and increase benefits!(*) But you made a different argument (or at least wrote it that way), and that's the argument I disagree with (cordially and politely): to paraphrase, that there's some stigma associated with F&B because it's F&B. I don't think so. Singaporeans (and their parents) seem perfectly happy, even excited, to work in F&B if the pay is reasonable and, as with any other sector, if there's a reasonable prospect for career progression. "It's nothing personal," basically.

Unfortunately I cannot find any detailed statistics on the composition of the F&B workforce in Singapore to see what's happening. There are only anecdotes, and that's not evidence. However, there are some clues in the statistics that are available. The government reduced the F&B foreign workforce cap from 50% to 40%, and yet the F&B sector still seems to be growing faster than the economy as a whole. Maybe increasing automation is playing a role, but a more likely explanation is that Singaporeans are getting drawn into the sector, at least to some degree.

By the way, the Oil & Gas industry, the big employers of chemical engineers, isn't exactly rocking and rolling these days.

(*) I have very limited patience for the tired, old newspaper stories about "worker shortages." Occasionally the reporters ask, "Well, what are you offering?" And the pay and benefits suck, of course, at least relative to local labor market conditions.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Guess what, BBCW, you are in a country of locals. Ask most any Chinese and they will tell you what they think of working in a place where they have to serve (e.g. wait on) people (owning is a different story) I would have thought you would have studied your history here of the local Chinese better. Their attitude of 'waiting' on people takes their face away. Yes, it's an old concept but it IS ingrained into their subconscious mind (even the young). The labour shortage is real and the distaste for service oriented jobs is just as real and it doesn't really have anything to do with money although the money in the F&B industry is abysmal I'll grant you. I have the same problem as I am also in a Service Industry, albeit, a different sector, a lot of our work is in F&B locations. We've always had a labour shortage and it is getting more and more critical every month due to lower quotas, higher levies and the inability to get Singaporeans to work with smelly chemicals doing manual labour in the sun and crappy weather with haze, etc. (That's also why all the town councils in the HDB estates use foreigners - they cannot get locals to do it). Sure you can pay them the moon but unless you can transmit those costs to the users/diners/drinkers/ etc. AND cover the costs of runaway rents, you won't stay in business. I have limited patience as well.......

[sundaymorningstaple]

IF.....if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump it's arse every time it jumped. If you raise wages and the wages and rent cannot be covered by the going prices of the products you go out of business. Very simple economic principle. You cannot price yourself out of your market. Same with the employee, they cannot price themselves out of the market either. Another problem is there is not a tipping culture here so those who are in the food service line get screwed by the employers as well by paying them Micky D salaries but keeping half of the money in the tip jar (normally only in F&B outlets where there are substantial tourist rather than local traffic) which the balance the employees are then forced to share with the non-wait staff. The whole industry sucks and I don't blame them for not staying, I have two nieces working in the industry down on the quays and a nephew who's a chef at Halia. One of the nieces and the nephew live with me, I hear the grouses all the time. There are no such things as professional waiters/waitresses who are "booked/requested" like in the better restaurants in the US. I've known waiters who were making 6 digit annual salaries back in the 1970's in Washington DC (I was a tax account in those days).

Having said that, I don't know what is being paid to those working the Integrated resorts but I suspect with a couple of exceptions, it's much the same if it is running in tandem with the low wages being paid to the casino staffs (croupiers, as such). And those are being laid off in droves now as the economy is slipping and player/tourists are drying up from China.

[ecureilx]

The labour shortage is real and the distaste for service oriented jobs is just as real and it doesn't really have anything to do with money although the money in the F&B industry is abysmal I'll grant you. I have the same problem as I am also in a Service Industry, albeit, a different sector, a lot of our work is in F&B locations. We've always had a labour shortage

If anybody says there's no labor shortage - needs to wake up and smell the air.

In the last 4 to 5 years, its hurting a lot of service industries. With whatever automaton, you still need staff.

Having said that, I don't know what is being paid to those working the Integrated resorts but I suspect with a couple of exceptions, it's much the same if it is running in tandem with the low wages being paid to the casino staffs (croupiers, as such). And those are being laid off in droves now as the economy is slipping and player/tourists are drying up from China.

Foreigners are being laid off in casinos. Locals are forced to work less hours = less take home. Must be hot for FnB staff.

[BBCWatcher]

Is there any business owner who has ever complained that their costs are too low?

The government has heard all these complaints and...the quota cap is still 40%, down from 50%. "Tough. Deal with it." (They say with a smile.) Try paying better than decent salaries, providing more benefits, treating your workers better, and/or improving working conditions. Then you might attract and retain some more employees. If you cannot afford that, then maybe you have an uneconomic business that ought to close. If that happens, there will be fewer restaurants and other F&B outlets, and that in turn should allow the survivors more room to raise prices...and to pay their workers better, etc. It's painful for a few business owners, yes, but isn't that all "working as designed"?

[sundaymorningstaple]

BBCW Go stuff it. You are starting to get annoying as you disagree with everybody on the forum, or you go off on a long winded irrelevant tangent. Sure they say it with a smile. They have to. First of all, now you are talking out your arse. Singapore doesn't have the manpower. They're trying their best to convince the retired to rejoin the work force because there aren't enough to fill the jobs they still have. As long as they don't start making babies it's only going to get worse. Raising salaries doesn't do any good if there are not locals to take up the positions. They got their fingers burnt in 2011 GE. While they got a resounding result in 2015 is was on the back of LKY's death only. The opposition is still screaming for blood and the PAP knows it. They don't have a choice if they want to stay in power. They have said as much. They've acknowledged the fact that they need foreign manpower to keep up the pace but they have let the population know they are bringing it on themselves. Once Singapore loses it edge it is finished as there are too many other ASEAN neighbour that are ready (???) and willing to take in the businesses as they have the manpower.

[BBCWatcher]

The fact is that the resident unemployment rate has edged up recently. The government is acting accordingly. It is what it is. Sorry if that upsets you.

[ecureilx]

The fact is that the resident unemployment rate has edged up recently. The government is acting accordingly. It is what it is. Sorry if that upsets you.

No, it's all gov responding to ground level feed back post last election. For better or worse, only time will tell.

[Strong Eagle]

The fact is that the resident unemployment rate has edged up recently. The government is acting accordingly. It is what it is. Sorry if that upsets you.

Yes, it has edged up precisely because of the anti-foreigner sentiment that PAP has apparently bought into. Run off 2 or 3 hundred thousand foreign workers and figure out what it does to the economy. Surely you can do that????

[sundaymorningstaple]

No, obviously common sense cannot be cut and pasted.....