The Case for an Independent Singaporean Labor Movement
新加坡独立劳工运动案例 – 工友之家 – 红歌会网 (szhgh.com)
原文：https://labourreview.org/singaporean-labor-movement/
作者：约瑟芬（Josephine） 译者：阿洛伊
原编者按：在新加坡一个发达的城市国家和富裕的人口的形象背后，是由国家控制的全国职工总会主导的劳工运动和对工人不利的三方制度的现实。近年来，一个新兴激进团体“工人创造可能”（Workers Make Possible）的出现，挑战了这一体系，并倡导建立独立的工人组织。
这样的挑战是非常必要的，但在一个从不回避将激进主义定罪的政治体系中，这也是有风险的。来自新加坡的独立研究员约瑟芬（Josephine）最近与“工人创造可能”组织的组织者库马尔（Kumarr）和科基拉（Kokila）进行了交谈，以了解新加坡劳工运动的现状，他们为什么要发起挑战，以及他们希望实现的目标。
所谓独立，并不是独立于社会主义运动，而是独立于新加坡人民行动党系统和全国职工总会。人民行动党是亲资本的，尽管它声称是社会主义的，但它不是。
问一：“工人创造可能”（WMP）是什么？你们想要做什么？
库马尔：“工人创造可能”是一个工人和租户的权益组织。我们遵循授权模式。我们相信，我们可以为工人提供让他们自己组织起来并与任何发生在他们身上的事情作斗争的工具方法。我们所做的很多工作都是为了在不同行业、不同国籍和不同收入水平的工人之间建立团结。这是一个真实的需求。建立我们作为新加坡工人的意识以及形成一个工人阶级的共同身份是我们承诺的重要组成部分。新加坡的许多公共话语分裂了工人阶级。例如，外来务工人员经常被视为与本地工人截然不同，他们提及这个问题时就好像我们间有不同的利益而且彼此对立。
科基拉：作为工人，我们也去政治化了。公民社会非常关注我们作为公民通过倡导来进行干预的权力，而这种权力越来越专业化了。但我认为，重要的是也要认识到我们作为工人的权力，包括我们拒绝工作的能力。这将是任何形式的长期政治变革的重要组成部分。我们不能忘记，新加坡的反殖民斗争就是建立在工人联盟的基础上的，是通过劳工运动的力量取得胜利的。
库马尔：“工人创造可能”还组织一年一度的劳动节集会。我们在去年举行了第一次，它的意义在于这是新加坡唯一一次政治上独立的五一集会——一个真正的人民的集会。
问二：你们提到过你们的独立性是“工人创造可能”之所以有必要存在的决定性原因。为什么这么说呢？
科基拉：我们所处的环境是工会完全被执政党人民行动党(即PAP，新加坡执政党，自1963年脱离殖民统治以来一直执政)笼络。独立是为工人创造空间，让他们以一种自下而上的方式组织起来，以他们自己的方式建立他们的权力。因为全国职工总会(即NTUC，新加坡唯一基于政府、雇主和工会三方工业关系模式的工会中心)完全只会让工人复工和去政治化。我们的三方制度使工人处于巨大的劣势中并削弱了他们的权力。它极大地削弱了工人的集体谈判能力并使谈判对工人不利，因为决定任何申诉结果的权力往往掌握在国家和雇主手中。因此，对于工人来说，能够独立组织起来而不被三方主义胁迫是至关重要的。
在我们目前的政治条件下，重要的是工人在三方体系之外独立组织起来。例如，如果我们有一个社会主义政党或一个社会主义政府，我认为工会保持这些政治联系是可以的，就像我们过去所做的那样，当时社会主义阵线(译注：即Barisan Sosialis，成立于1961年，致力于建立一个由马来亚联邦和新加坡组成的独立民主的马来亚统一国家，于1988年并入新加坡工人党。)代表工人的利益。他们组织了许多行业的工人，许多党员都是劳工组织者，他们在新加坡各地建立并领导了许多工会，这些工会又成为更广泛的社会主义运动的一部分。而当我们有一个资本主义政府时，对我们和任何正式的工人协会来说，独立于人民行动党系统和全国职工总会是很重要的。这就是我们所说的独立。
库马尔：它是独立于商业和资本之外的，这并不一定是反对人民行动党，但人民行动党态度鲜明地扶持商业。它是亲资本的。它声称它是社会主义的，但它不是。例如，如果你看看全国工资理事会（National Wage Council）的三方代表，工人代表就是全国职工总会的代表，而全国职工总会是国家控制的。你有了企业和工会领导人，但工人自己的代表性不足。
问三：这种三方模式的合法性基础就是现代化的工会。这个方案来自于新加坡早期的发展历史。从那时起，三方主义就与产业和平、经济发展和效率混为一谈。这是真的吗？
库马尔：“产业和平”是许多政府用来证明加大对警察的投入以破坏罢工、瓦解工会等的理由。这是一个听起来很好听的表述，但它有着非常暴力的内涵意义。我们不认为产业和平对工人来说一定是件好事。我们生活在一场阶级战争中。只有资本家赢了。任何倡导产业和平的政府都是在支持瓦解工人阶级及其斗争的力量。
科基拉：三方模式是反竞争的。正义是从竞争中产生的，从根本上说，资本和劳动者有着不同的利益。当我们有不同的利益时，只有通过维护我们作为工人反对压迫的权利——当资本拥有如此不成比例的权力时——我们才有可能得到公正的结果。假装资本和劳动者可以有共同点是一个谎言。我们不想要同样的东西。只有我们集体力量的威慑才能控制资本。这种每个人都是朋友的模式——全国职工总会喜欢建议的——不符合工人的利益。它最终为资本和国家服务，以维护他们对工人阶级的权力。
库马尔：这种所谓的产业和平允许资本无休止地“罢工”，而不是劳工享有罢工权利。所以这是双重标准。资本通过资本外逃进行“罢工”。当企业决定不再在这里投资时，因为劳动法太苛刻了，或者——哦，现在流行的都是弹性工作安排。政府已经提及了所有这些事情，某些部长说，如果我们允许每周工作四天或灵活的工作安排，那么企业就会转移到印度。
科基拉：这就是资本“罢工”的威胁。即使没有真正的资本外逃，他们也威胁要剥夺工人的合理工作条件，我们被迫接受越来越差的条件。总的来说，60年代以来，自从工人运动被人民行动党暴力摧毁后，工人们已经把太多的权力交给了资本。当发生根本的利益冲突时，岂能只有一方有权利发出威胁？
问四：自20世纪90年代以来，除了少数外来务工人员权利组织外，劳工问题在新加坡公民社会中一直处于次要地位。草根劳工运动的复兴背后有哪些最近的推动因素？
科基拉：我认为重要的是要认识到工人们一直都在进行斗争。2012年，新加坡地铁公司(即SMRT Corporation，新加坡两家公共交通运营商之一，是新加坡政府所有的企业集团淡马锡控股，即Temasek Holdings的子公司)的工人发起了由华裔司机领导的自发罢工，抗议公司提供的歧视性工资和糟糕的住宿标准。在20世纪90年代、2000年代和2010年代，工人们一直在进行不同形式的抵抗。有些我们知道，有些我们还不了解。国家媒体如何强调其行为的非法性，也是有意为之。在新加坡，除非雇主提前两周收到通知，否则工人的罢工基本都是非法的。违反者最高可被罚款2000美元，或被监禁一年，或两罪并罚。但也许更糟糕的是，媒体从不报道这些，完全掩盖了它们。
“工人创造可能”运动之所以开始，是因为我们注意到了这些行动。在2019年，一群公交车司机起诉了SBS Transit(为新加坡一公交公司，该公司是由康福德高公司，即ComfortDelGro Corporation控股的新加坡另一家主要公共交通运营商)，原因是该公司让他们的工作时间超过了每周72小时的法定限制，拒绝给他们休息日，并且少付他们的加班费。工人们各自分别提出了要求SBS赔偿损失的诉讼。最令人震惊的是移民和当地工人在这起案件中是如此合作的——包括10名马来西亚司机和3名新加坡司机。但是公民社会并没有注意到这一点。在新加坡，工人的行动往往不被登记为政治行动、集体行动或反抗压迫的人。一个非政府组织（NGO）提交研究报告或进行媒体宣传，都被登记为反抗压迫，但为什么没有人谈论、支持他们，或将他们视为参与政治反抗？所以，我们联系了负责这个案子的律师，想看看我们能如何支持这些工人。
当然，如果没有坚定的或持续的努力来建立工人运动，这些行动就无法形成力量。人们总是在自己的工作场所采取行动，或悄无声息或惊天动地以对抗各种压迫。但如果没有组织，或者没有意识到这是一场集体斗争，它就无法形成力量。因此，我们在“工人创造可能”中所扮演的角色就是在工人运动的复兴中，看到工人在哪里愤怒，在哪里斗争，支持它，并将斗争联系起来，以这种方式重建工人运动。
问五：今天的劳工运动与过去的有什么不同或相似之处?
库马尔：如果你谈论五六十年代劳工运动的全盛时期，他们有不同的条件。反殖民主义高涨，劳工运动与之交织在一起。没有诡谲复杂的镇压手段;我们的白人(指执政的人民行动党政府)能比白人更好地殖民我们——他们孤立、分裂和统治的方式，也塑造了观点和意识形态。那时候我们还没有这些。劳工运动具有先发优势。而我们今天没有了那种活力。我们必须激发起这种活力。挑战是建立在几十年的压制之上的，几十年以来，统治者告诉工人和个人，你很渺小，你毫无价值，你的老板比你更了解你，你很愚蠢，你没有权力。
科基拉：我认为组织工人阶级和建立人民运动作为实现政治变革的方式在当时是常识，但现在对这种可能性的共识和信心都有所减少。与其他激进主义和倡导模式相比，组织工人或租户为自己的权利而战甚至被认为是落后的，或者是一种不可行的策略。
问六：你们关于激发活力的观点让我想起了你们组织的劳动节集会。它展示了各种各样的理由，其中一些与劳工问题没有直接关系。例如，你们组织了SG Climate Rally(即新加坡气候集会，是一个由学生领导的气候行动组织，于2019年组织了新加坡的第一次气候集会)和NTU FinAid (全称NTU Financial Aid Friends，即南洋理工大学助学金之友，是一个在南洋理工大学成立的学生组织，致力于改善南洋理工大学的学费补助制度)。他们与“工人创造可能”试图建立的劳工运动有何联系?
库马尔：所有这些原因都有阶级性。以气候危机为例，新加坡气候集会的宗旨为了一个公正的过渡。它不仅仅是追求不惜一切代价地减少排放。它是一个经常谈论我们应如何让工人与我们一起转型的组织，以让他们不会因此而遭受过大的损失，而且还能良好发展。
对我们来说，建立和维持联盟是必要的，因为劳工运动不能建立在一个远离我们这个时代其他紧迫的社会问题的遥远孤岛上。我们也对一个人人都能居住的星球感兴趣!重要的是，我们发起了一个朝气蓬勃的学生运动，并且与工人彼此团结。而南洋理工大学助学金之友是为学生能负担得起的学费而奋斗的，这样低收入背景的年轻人也可以上大学了。这同样也是工人阶级的问题。
科基拉：我们所有的挣扎都是相连的。将我们联系在一起的是，劳动节的所有团体都代表着工人阶级的利益，无论是性工作者的利益、工人阶级学生的利益，还是低收入租户的利益。我认为，工人阶级运动必须有比经济主义或仅在工作场所争取更好的工资和生活条件有更宽广的视野。工作场所只是冲突的一个场所。这就是为什么福利问题是劳动节的重要组成部分。要求负担得起的住房、医疗保健和受教育的机会是属于普通人的公共资源。社会再生产问题与生产问题一样，也是我们劳动节要求、演讲和展示的一部分。这是一场争取更好的工作和生活条件的斗争。
库马尔：还有独立的大众媒体。这就是Wake Up SG（即唤醒新加坡，一个由志愿者运营的独立媒体机构）出现在现场的原因。这样一个组织在为说出许多工人的故事提供平台方面发挥了重要作用。它还有反帝国主义的成分。战争往往使工人阶级处于不利地位：工人阶级通常被迫去打仗，并在战争中丧生。当我们说“还权于民”或“还政于民”时，这意味着所有这一切——人们掌握的媒体、人民掌握的大学——都将会成为民主的范围空间。我们的共同愿景就是为大众提供民主的空间和机会。
问七：“工人创造可能”认为新加坡的法律和政策需要做出哪些具体改变以改善工人的生活？
库马尔：去年的劳动节，我们提出了十五项要求（译注：原文见Power To The People: Labour Day Rally 2023，https://workersmakepossible.wordpress.com/labourday23/)，其主要涉及消费税与财富税、最低工资标准、员工休息权益、就业支持与失业保障、消除就业歧视、关心工人健康、保障工会权利、降低获得加班费的工资门槛限制、学校引入劳动法教育、保障退休养老金、管控物价、人人可获得的优质医疗资源、照顾弱势群体、消除申请福利的重重限制、住房诸多方面的问题）。这些要求将继续指导我们的工作。其中许多要求包括修改立法及最低工资等政策、禁止用货车车厢运输外来务工人员、减少对成立独立工会的限制。
问八：“工人创造可能”是否认为有任何特别的需求必须作为第一块倒下的多米诺骨牌？
科基拉：我认为，要使其他一切成为可能，首先需要改变的是所有阻止工人组织和发声的严厉制裁和法律。暴力恐怖实在是太多了。只有当工人们能够毫无顾忌地发声、组织并行动起来时，我们才能在其他问题上取得胜利。
如果工人一旦掌握自由，他们便会在任何地方发起反击。我们不需要在这方面教育他们。但问题就在于诸多障碍的存在。如果消除了这些障碍，社会就会繁荣，工人也会兴旺。我认为，法律、行政和政治基本框架都在削弱工人阶级的力量，如通过各种逮捕、开除的威胁，以及对工人阶级来说是残酷和惩罚性的工作环境，这些都是最大的障碍。如果工人连续数月拿不到工资，他们甚至连默默举起标语牌的自由都没有，我们最近就看到了这样的情况——工人们经历了数月的工资拖欠，但却因为呼吁关注而被驱逐出境。如果你连这一点都做不到，那么你就无法争取最低工资，因为你需要表达、集会和结社的自由。
库马尔：是的，这是关于民主化的问题，这不仅仅是一个劳工问题，实际上也关系到许多其他事业。你不能发传单或张贴海报，这太窒息了。
问九：鉴于新加坡的民主自由受到越来越多的限制，以及数十年来劳工被收编的情况，“工人创造可能”所寻求的目标是雄心勃勃的。是什么让你们坚持下来？你们的学习和灵感来源是什么？
科基拉：我认为，当我们将自己置身于具体的时间和地点之中时，我们力所能及的事情就会变多，我们对这二者的理解也会深化。学习 50 年代、60 年代和 70 年代的工人运动让我感受到了一种可能性，因为没有这些遗产就没有运动。我们总是在某些东西的基础上继续前进。我发现的问题之一就是这种近乎反常的持久的“现在感”。就好像现在发生的一切都刚刚发生一样。这是一种现时主义。好像所有事情都是第一次做。现实并非如此，很多事情以前都已经完成，我们正在从历史中建设和学习。我认为，忘记了我们的历史会给我们带来巨大的危险；而将我们置身于历史中去学习才能强大起来。
我们中的一些人一直在探索，到邻国旅行，了解他人如何组织基层，不论是租户还是工人。时空观念的扩大带来了各种可能。你的想象力得到了拓展，因为你正在远离这种非常狭隘的 “现在感”，并从过去和他处正在发生的事情中汲取力量和机遇。我认为这也是在反对例外主义，好像新加坡的一切都很特别，以至于我们不能做我们的邻居和世界各地的人们正在做的事情。从前人和我们周围的人身上汲取灵感，使我们成为可能。
我确实认为现在更具挑战性。与 90 年代之前相比，现在开展劳工运动的挑战性要大得多，这一点怎么强调都不为过。当时的社会主义精神要强得多。工人运动在地区范围内得到了极大的声援，人们有机会团结起来反对殖民统治者这个共同的敌人，我认为这提供了某种机会。但是，在任何条件下，无论压迫多么严重，反抗都有可能而且有必要找到一种方式，就像一棵幼苗从混凝土的缝隙中挤出来，在世界上占据一席之地。
The Case for an Independent Singaporean Labor Movement
By Josephine
Editor’s Note:
Behind the image of Singapore as a wealthy city-state with an affluent population is the reality of a labor movement dominated by the state-controlled National Trades Union Congress and a tripartite system that disadvantages workers. In recent years, a new radical collective, Workers Make Possible, has emerged to challenge this system, and advocate instead for independent worker organizing.
Such a challenge is much needed, but also daunting in a political system that doesn’t shy away from criminalizing activism. Josephine, an independent researcher from Singapore, recently spoke with Kumarr and Kokila who are organizers with Workers Make Possible, to learn about Singapore’s labor movement landscape, why they are mounting a challenge, and what they hope to accomplish.
Who are Workers Make Possible (WMP), and what do you do?
Kumarr: Workers Make Possible is a workers’ and tenants’ rights organization. We follow an empowerment model. We believe that we can provide the tools to workers to organize themselves and fight whatever comes their way. A lot of what we do is about building solidarity amongst workers from different sectors, different nationalities, and different income levels. There is a real need for that. Building our consciousness as workers in Singapore and building a shared identity as one working class is a big part of our commitment. A lot of public discourse in Singapore fragments the working class. For example, migrant workers are often seen quite separately from local workers, and they talk about it as if we have different interests and are pitted against each other.
Kokila: There is also depoliticization of us as workers. Civil society focuses a lot on our power as citizens to make interventions through advocacy, which is increasingly professionalized. But I think it’s important to also recognize our power as workers, including our ability to withhold labor. It will be an important piece in long-term political change of any kind. We cannot forget that Singapore’s anticolonial struggle was built on the backs of labor and trade unions and won through the power of the labor movement.
Kumarr: WMP also organizes an annual Labor Day rally. We did the first one last year, and its significance is that it’s the only politically independent May Day rally in Singapore—a rally by and of the people.
You’ve mentioned that your independence is a defining reason why WMP is necessary. Why is this so?
Kokila: We operate in an environment where unions are completely co-opted by the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP). Independence is about creating space for workers to organize in a way that builds their power from the ground up, on their terms, because National Trades Union Congress (or NTUC, Singapore’s only trade union center based on a tripartite model of industrial relations between the government, employers, and unions) completely demobilizes and depoliticizes workers. The tripartite system we have here puts workers at a huge disadvantage and neuters their power. It hugely diminishes workers’ collective bargaining power and skews negotiations against workers since power often lies with the state and employers in determining the outcome of any grievance. So, it’s crucial for workers to be able to organize independently without being forced into tripartism,
Under our current political conditions, it is important for workers to organize independently of the tripartite system. For example, if we had a socialist party or a socialist government, I think it’s fine for unions to have those political affiliations, as we did in the past when the Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front, a left-wing political party) represented workers’ interests. They organized workers in many sectors, and many party members were labor organizers who built and led a lot of unions across Singapore as part of a broader socialist movement. When we have a capitalist government, it is important for us and any serious workers’ associations to be independent of the People’s Action Party (or PAP, the ruling party that has remained in power since independence from colonial rule in 1963) system and NTUC. That is what we mean when we say independent.
Kumarr: It’s about being independent of business and capital, which isn’t necessarily anti-PAP, but the PAP is very pro-business. It is pro-capital. It claims that it’s socialist, but it’s not. If you look at tripartite representation in the National Wage Council, for example, the workers’ representative is an NTUC representative, and the NTUC is state-controlled. You’ve got business and union leaders, but workers themselves are underrepresented.
The basis of legitimacy for this tripartite model is modernizing unions. That idea came out of Singapore’s early years of development. Since then, tripartism has been conflated with industrial peace, economic development, and efficiency. How true is this?
Kumarr:‘Industrial peace’ is what a lot of governments use to justify higher investments in police to break strikes, to bust unions, and so on. It’s a very nice sounding phrase, but it has very violent connotations. We don’t think industrial peace is necessarily a good thing for workers. We are living in a class war. It’s just that the capitalists are winning. Any government that advocates for industrial peace is agreeing to dismantle the working class and its power to fight.
Kokila: The tripartite model is anti-contestation. Justice comes about through contestation, and that fundamentally, capital and labor have different interests. And when we have different interests, it is only by preserving our rights as workers to contest oppression – when capital has so much disproportionate power – that we can even have any possibility of just outcomes. It is a lie to pretend that capital and labor can have common ground. We don’t want the same things. It is only the threat of our collective power that can keep capital in check. This model of everybody being friends with each other – which NTUC likes to suggest – is not in workers’ interests. It ultimately serves capital and the state in preserving their power over the working class.
Kumarr: This so-called industrial peace allows capital to go on strike endlessly but not labor. So there’s a double standard. Capital goes on strike through capital flight. When businesses decide they don’t want to invest here anymore because the labor laws are too strong, or – oh, all the jazz now is about flexible work arrangements. The government has proposed all these things, and certain ministers have said that if we allow for a four-day workweek or flexible work arrangements, then businesses will just move to India.
Kokila: That is the threat of capital strike. Even if there’s no actual capital flight, they threaten to deny workers reasonable conditions, and we are forced to accept worse and worse terms. Overall, since the 60s, since the labor movement was violently decimated by the PAP, workers have ceded so much power to capital. When there are fundamentally opposed interests, how can only one party have the right to make these threats?
Apart from a few migrant worker rights groups, labor issues have consistently taken a backseat in Singaporean civil society since the 1990s. What are some recent drivers behind this resurgence of grassroots labor activism?
Kokila: I think it’s important to recognize that workers have always engaged in struggles. There was the SMRT Corporation (One of two of Singapore’s public transport operators and a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings, a conglomerate owned by the Singapore government) workers’ wildcat strike in 2012, which was led by migrant Chinese drivers who protested against discriminatory salaries and the poor standards of accommodation provided by the company. Through the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, workers have been engaged in different forms of resistance. Some we know of, and some we don’t. It’s also intentionally shrouded in how the state media emphasizes the illegality of their actions. In Singapore, strikes by essential workers are illegal unless employers are given two weeks’ notice. Workers could be fined up to $2000, a year of imprisonment, or both. But perhaps worse is when the media doesn’t report on them and obscures them completely.
WMP started because we paid attention to these actions. We started when a group of bus drivers sued SBS Transit (The other major public transport operator under majority ownership by ComfortDelGro Corporation in 2019 for making them work past the weekly legal limit of 72 hours, denying them rest days, and underpaying them for overtime shifts. The workers filed separate lawsuits to seek damages from SBS. What was so striking was how migrant and local workers worked together on that case – 10 Malaysian drivers and 3 Singaporean ones. But civil society wasn’t paying attention. In Singapore, workers’ actions are often not registered as political action, as collective action, or as people contesting oppression. An NGO submitting a research report or doing a media campaign is registered as fighting oppression, but why was no one talking about this, supporting them, or seeing them as involved in political resistance? So, we reached out to the lawyer working on the case and wanted to see how we could support the workers.
Of course, when there is no committed or sustained effort to build a labor movement, these actions cannot build power. People are always taking action in their own workplaces, quietly or loudly, to fight different kinds of oppressive conditions. But when it’s not organized, or there isn’t consciousness that this is a collective struggle, it cannot build power. So, what we see our role as in WMP in terms of this resurgence of the labor movement is to see where workers are angry, where they’re fighting, support it and connect the fights – rebuilding the labor movement that way.
How is the labor movement of today different or similar to those of the past?
Kumarr: If you talk about the heyday of the labor movement in the 50s and 60s, they had different conditions. You had an anticolonial upsurge, and the labor movement was intertwined with that. There weren’t intricate methods of oppression; our men in white (reference to the ruling PAP government) colonize us better than the white men – the way that they isolate, divide and rule, and also shape perspectives and ideology. We didn’t have that back then. The labor movement had the first-mover advantage. We don’t have that vibrancy today. We have to build it. The challenge is building that on decades of suppression, decades of telling workers and individuals that you’re small, that you’re worthless, that your boss knows better than you, that you’re stupid, and that you have no power.
Kokila: I think the idea of organizing the working class and building a people’s movement as the way to bring about political change was common sense at the time, but now there is less shared imagination and confidence in this possibility. Organizing workers or tenants to fight for their rights is even perceived as anachronistic or an unviable strategy compared to other models of activism and advocacy.
Your point on building vibrancy makes me think about the Labor Day rally you organized. It showcased a variety of causes, some of which were not directly related to labor issues. For example, you had SG Climate Rally (A student-led climate activism group that organized Singapore’s first climate rally in 2019) and NTU FinAid (NTU Financial Aid Friends, a student group formed at Nanyang Technological University that campaigns for improvement to the university’s financial aid system). How are they connected to the labor movement WMP is trying to build?
Kumarr: There is a class character to all these causes. Look at the climate crisis, for example. SG Climate Rally they are for a just transition. They’re not just about cutting down emissions at all costs. They are an organization that has talked a lot about how we need to bring workers along with us in the transition and that they don’t suffer disproportionately from it and are able to thrive as well.
For us, building and sustaining alliances is necessary because the labor movement cannot be built in a silo away from other pressing social concerns of our times. We are also interested in a planet that we can all live in! And it’s important that we have a student movement that is vibrant and in mutual solidarity with workers. NTU Finaid fights for affordable student fees so that youth from lower-income backgrounds can go to college. And that’s a working-class issue.
Kokila: All our struggles are connected. What connects us is all the groups at Labor Day represent working class interests, whether it’s the interests of sex workers, the interests of working-class students, or the interests of low-income tenants. I think the working-class movement must have a vision that is broader than economism or workers fighting for better wages and living conditions at the workplace alone. The workplace is only one site of the fight. That’s why welfare is a big part of Labor Day. Asking for affordable housing or healthcare and access to education are public goods that belong to ordinary people. Social reproduction issues are as much a part of our Labor Day demands, speeches and messaging as production is. It is a fight for better working and living conditions.
Kumarr: And an independent mass-based media. That’s why Wake Up SG (Wake Up Singapore, a volunteer-run independent media outfit) was there. Such an organization has been so instrumental in platforming a lot of these workers’ stories. There was also an anti-imperialist section. Wars very often disadvantage the working class. It’s usually working-class people who are made to fight these wars and are killed in these wars. And when we say, “power to the people” or “return power to the people”, it means all of this – powered media, people-powered universities – that these become democratic spaces. The shared vision is for democratic spaces and possibilities for the masses.
What are some concrete changes to laws and policies in Singapore that WMP believes are necessary to improve the lives of workers?
Kumarr: For Labor Day last year, we came up with fifteen demands. These continue to inform our work. Many of them include changes to legislation, policies like minimum wages, banning the transport of migrant workers on the backs of lorries, and fewer restrictions on the formation of independent unions.
Is there any particular demand that WMP believes is necessary as the first domino to fall?
Kokila: The first thing that needs to change, I think, for everything else to become possible – is all the severe sanctions and laws preventing workers from organizing and speaking up. There’s too much fear. We can only win on other issues once workers can speak without fear, organize, and take action.
Workers will – and do, everywhere, if they’re free to – fight back. We don’t need to teach them. But the problem is all the barriers. If you take away the barriers, communities will thrive, and workers will thrive. I think that the legal, administrative, and political infrastructure that is diminishing the power of the working class, through all the threats of arrest, the threats of losing your job, and the very carceral and punitive environment for the working class, are the biggest barriers. Workers don’t have the freedom even to hold up placards in silence if they are not paid wages for months on end, which we saw recently happen – workers who’ve been experiencing wage theft for months but were deported for calling attention to it. If you cannot even do that, then you cannot fight for minimum wages because you need the freedom to express, assemble, and associate.
Kumarr: Yeah, it’s about democratizing, which is not just a labor issue, but really it concerns many other causes too. You can’t give out flyers or put up posters; it’s too suffocating.
Given increasing limits on democratic freedoms and the decades-long co-optation of labor in Singapore, what WMP seeks to do is ambitious. What keeps you going? What are your sources of learning and inspiration?
Kokila: I think the sense of what we can do expands when we situate ourselves in time and place, and our understanding of both expands. Learning about the labor movement in the 50s, 60s, 70s, provided me with a sense of possibility because there can be no movement without legacy. We’re always building on something. One of the problems I see is this almost perverse sense of constant “now-ness”. It is as if everything that is happening now just came about. There is a presentism. It’s like everything is being done for the first time. No, a lot has been done before, and we’re building and learning from our history. I think it is to our great peril that we forget, and it’s so strengthening to learn, to situate ourselves in history.
Some of us have been exploring, making trips to neighboring countries, and learning how they’re organizing the grassroots, whether it’s the tenants or workers. That expanded sense of time and place brings possibilities. Your imagination expands because you’re moving away from this very narrow ‘now-ness’, drawing strength and possibility from what has happened before and what is happening outside of here. And I think it’s also fighting this exceptionalism, as if everything is so special in Singapore that we cannot do what our neighbors and people everywhere around the world are doing. Drawing inspiration from people before us and the people around us has made it possible.
I do think it’s very much more challenging. It cannot be stressed enough how much more challenging it is to build a labor movement now than before the 90s. There was a much stronger socialist spirit at the time. There was so much regional solidarity for the workers’ movement, and people had the opportunity to be united against the common enemy of colonial rulers, which I think provided a certain kind of opportunity. But under all conditions, however oppressive, it is possible, and necessary, for resistance to find a way, like a seedling forcing its way through a crack in the concrete, claiming its place in the world.
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