Interesting read in Star…
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?fi … &sec=focus
Some snippets
[i]
ASK any person who employs other people and they will say their workers get too many days off and public holidays. Ask the workers and their answers will be exactly the opposite.
Many countries already have a retirement age of 65 and some dont even have a retirement age and here we are baulking because of employer opposition.
Why is the private sector behaving like that? It wants to get rid of staff and get new ones at lower pay or retain the old ones on yearly contracts and with reduced benefits, saving costs.
It seems like the rest of us have to keep on subsidising the exporters through a weak currency and lower wages so that they can make money
If management thinks 10 days of annual leave is too much for workers, ask how much top management gets the norm is 30 days, but of course they will argue that they work all the time. Anyway, dont some workers too?
And, finally, the most ironic part. Many workers actually employ people yes, maids.
And what do a good proportion of them think when it comes to their own servants. No leave! They will get into mischief if they get out of the house. And so one strata of society exploits the next and the next the ones below and it goes all the way down to the lowest economic strata.
No wonder theres such a scramble to get to the top and do all the exploiting!
Germany is moving to a four-and-a-half-day week, France has a seven-hour work day, Australians value their leisure as do many others. How come they are all so much more productive than Malaysia?
If only everybody thought of others as themselves and focused on giving decent wages for good work done and not making enormous profits at somebody elses expense, we all can have a good life together.[/i]