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http://www.transitioning.org/2011/1...replaced-all-local-staff-with-his-own-people/
Hi, thank you Francis for agreeing to complete our interview questions regarding work place bullying.
First of all, can you tell us abit about yourself e.g. your age, qualification and work experience?
I am in my late 30s and have been working in the IT industry for over 10 years. My last job in Singapore was with a top Global Fortune 500 MNC company, in a mid-level management role. This company provides IT Management to companies around the world.
You have commented in our article that you have experienced workplace bullying; can you tell us more about it?
First of all, I would like to say that workplace bullying can be found in any organizations anywhere in the world. I have seen and been through some bullying in my career and have worked with bullies and overcame challenges but I have never seen one as worst as the one which I am about to share.
The bullying started when my company wanted to reduce operational costs and hired a new IT director, Ravichadran. His roots are from India. I have nothing against Indians and in fact some of my closest colleagues I had in Singapore are from India. However, this particular Indian IT director had a sinister agenda to replace all levels of staff with his own people as well as to offshore part of the operations to India.
I would like to reiterate that not all India Indians are nasty people. There are bad apples as with any other races but what irks Singaporeans are when foreigners from another country comes to Singapore, bring in their wrong cultures, displaced Singaporean out of their jobs and gave them to their own people.
I was stationed in Bangalore, Indian for a couple of months before and a good Indian colleague, who is born in Bangalore, shared with me if your boss is a Tamilian and he believed in groupism, his entire team will be tamilians. This sort of recruitment trend has hit Bangalore where only 10% of locals born Banglore people are in IT. The rest are all IT staff working in Bangalore outside this state. It is almost impossible to find a job in Bangalore for a local person if the hiring manager is a tamilian.
Many Indians are trying to move out of India. The main reason is corruption, and some Indian companies are corrupted together with politicians. For example, the Indian currency, rupee, is being manipulated to make it cheaper so that companies are tempted to outsource jobs from overseas to India.
Sorry for the sidetrack but I thought that it is important Singaporeans know abit about the culture in India as we are seeing a lot of Indians working here eight now.
Back in Singapore, I had to work with this Indian IT director and we needed to recruit some staff. I was given the authority to conduct the first round of interview. I selected 4 candidates – 3 Singaporeans and 1 PR and submitted their resumes to this Indian director. He claimed that I lacked judgment and rejected all of them and he opened his office drawer and told me to select these candidates he had.
On the day of the interview with the preselected Indian candidates, the director purposely came along with me into the interview room. Half way through the conversation, he conducted the interview in Tamil and they were happily chatting away.
The director turned to me and told me: “ Put in the interview report that YOU ( meaning I) recommend this Indian candidate and submit the report to him”. He will put the report up to his management for approval. So, it appeared that he is not the person doing the interview and recruitment but the candidates was recommended by me and approved by his boss.
When I didn’t want to play his game, he made my life miserable by holding me accountable for any screw up in my team. He created a Blame and Shame culture where individual staff or group of people are blamed for small mistakes and shamed them in public / report to management.
The IT director also arranged meetings either 12pm or 5pm and I am forced to eat late lunch or stay late to finish the work. The IT director says that it is a culture in Indian that they work till 9 to 10pm.The late nights also nearly caused my marriage because my wife thought I was having an affair and I have little desire for sex with her due to depression and coming back home so late.
I wanted to leave my job but I think of my children and mortgages. Some of my staff were de-motivated and left. The IT director started to replace all my staff under me with his own people. The IT director also reported to the HR Director that from the exit interview he had “conducted” with those staff that had left – I am a mean person and pressurized my staff to perform and hence they left.
What recourse did you take when you were bullied at work? Did you approached MOM?
I spoke to HR and Union but he covered his tracks very well all abuses were done verbally and there is no concrete evidence I can pin point him with.
Do you feel that Singapore labour law here is very lax and that employees have little protection against errant employers?
Our labour law allows employers to employ up to 100% of its workforce with FTs. What irks me is how thin the line is for our PMETs when locals in Singapore can be easily replaced by FTs. There are no audits conducted by MOM against the mismanagement of the hiring of Singaporean vs FT workers.
Many Singaporeans currently are struggling with having too many foreign workers in the work place, what is your view on this?
The government has created a culture for employers to easily recruit foreigners. As I have mentioned earlier, there are a lot of push factors for Indians to get a job overseas. I won’t be surprised if a lucrative loop hole has been created for black marketers to profit from this long ago.
You have mentioned that currently you are working abroad, can you tell us abit about the difference between the two countries’ system?
I migrated overseas because an opportunity came along. I would not have left my country had it not been for the mass immigration of FT into Singapore. Local jobs are now taken over by FTs or gone offshore to cheaper country. I heard that more than 40% of our work force in Singapore are FTs now.
In Australia, there are laws to protect people against racism or bullying. When I started work in Australia, my first induction was work safe regulations. Work safe practices are in place in every organization against bullying and especially against tactics deployed by bosses like my ex-IT Indian director.
Have a look at the website from Work Safe which has a lot of advice to assist employees against work place bullying.
There are also free lawyers who can advice anyone if they require assistance, called legal aid and civil court that assist individual who were bullied or feel being victimized.
http://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/CA256DBB0022825D/HomePage?ReadForm&1=Home~&2=~&3=~
For example, in Australia, I had an issue with one of my house builder who insulted me because I was not happy with the renovation work he has done and wanted correction to be made. We went to VCAT to resolve the problem. In the end, I got an apology letter and was compensated on the renovation. I am thankful that there are such services available for citizenss and PR.
It all boils down to policies in respecting Human Rights !
Many Singaporeans currently are struggling with having too many foreign workers in the work place, what is your view on this?
The government should put audits against employers who are out to take advantage of our system to recruit FT. Instead I am seeing that transitioning.org is taking the initiative to publish company names when whistle blowers sound out the alarm. Why must it be local people to do so when it should be the people who open the flood gate?
End of interview
Editor’s Note: Francis has asked us not to name the company in case some of the local staff still working there will be implicated. This article will be forwarded to the Ministry of Manpower for their information and response.
Hi, thank you Francis for agreeing to complete our interview questions regarding work place bullying.
First of all, can you tell us abit about yourself e.g. your age, qualification and work experience?
I am in my late 30s and have been working in the IT industry for over 10 years. My last job in Singapore was with a top Global Fortune 500 MNC company, in a mid-level management role. This company provides IT Management to companies around the world.
You have commented in our article that you have experienced workplace bullying; can you tell us more about it?
First of all, I would like to say that workplace bullying can be found in any organizations anywhere in the world. I have seen and been through some bullying in my career and have worked with bullies and overcame challenges but I have never seen one as worst as the one which I am about to share.
The bullying started when my company wanted to reduce operational costs and hired a new IT director, Ravichadran. His roots are from India. I have nothing against Indians and in fact some of my closest colleagues I had in Singapore are from India. However, this particular Indian IT director had a sinister agenda to replace all levels of staff with his own people as well as to offshore part of the operations to India.
I would like to reiterate that not all India Indians are nasty people. There are bad apples as with any other races but what irks Singaporeans are when foreigners from another country comes to Singapore, bring in their wrong cultures, displaced Singaporean out of their jobs and gave them to their own people.
I was stationed in Bangalore, Indian for a couple of months before and a good Indian colleague, who is born in Bangalore, shared with me if your boss is a Tamilian and he believed in groupism, his entire team will be tamilians. This sort of recruitment trend has hit Bangalore where only 10% of locals born Banglore people are in IT. The rest are all IT staff working in Bangalore outside this state. It is almost impossible to find a job in Bangalore for a local person if the hiring manager is a tamilian.
Many Indians are trying to move out of India. The main reason is corruption, and some Indian companies are corrupted together with politicians. For example, the Indian currency, rupee, is being manipulated to make it cheaper so that companies are tempted to outsource jobs from overseas to India.
Sorry for the sidetrack but I thought that it is important Singaporeans know abit about the culture in India as we are seeing a lot of Indians working here eight now.
Back in Singapore, I had to work with this Indian IT director and we needed to recruit some staff. I was given the authority to conduct the first round of interview. I selected 4 candidates – 3 Singaporeans and 1 PR and submitted their resumes to this Indian director. He claimed that I lacked judgment and rejected all of them and he opened his office drawer and told me to select these candidates he had.
On the day of the interview with the preselected Indian candidates, the director purposely came along with me into the interview room. Half way through the conversation, he conducted the interview in Tamil and they were happily chatting away.
The director turned to me and told me: “ Put in the interview report that YOU ( meaning I) recommend this Indian candidate and submit the report to him”. He will put the report up to his management for approval. So, it appeared that he is not the person doing the interview and recruitment but the candidates was recommended by me and approved by his boss.
When I didn’t want to play his game, he made my life miserable by holding me accountable for any screw up in my team. He created a Blame and Shame culture where individual staff or group of people are blamed for small mistakes and shamed them in public / report to management.
The IT director also arranged meetings either 12pm or 5pm and I am forced to eat late lunch or stay late to finish the work. The IT director says that it is a culture in Indian that they work till 9 to 10pm.The late nights also nearly caused my marriage because my wife thought I was having an affair and I have little desire for sex with her due to depression and coming back home so late.
I wanted to leave my job but I think of my children and mortgages. Some of my staff were de-motivated and left. The IT director started to replace all my staff under me with his own people. The IT director also reported to the HR Director that from the exit interview he had “conducted” with those staff that had left – I am a mean person and pressurized my staff to perform and hence they left.
What recourse did you take when you were bullied at work? Did you approached MOM?
I spoke to HR and Union but he covered his tracks very well all abuses were done verbally and there is no concrete evidence I can pin point him with.
Do you feel that Singapore labour law here is very lax and that employees have little protection against errant employers?
Our labour law allows employers to employ up to 100% of its workforce with FTs. What irks me is how thin the line is for our PMETs when locals in Singapore can be easily replaced by FTs. There are no audits conducted by MOM against the mismanagement of the hiring of Singaporean vs FT workers.
Many Singaporeans currently are struggling with having too many foreign workers in the work place, what is your view on this?
The government has created a culture for employers to easily recruit foreigners. As I have mentioned earlier, there are a lot of push factors for Indians to get a job overseas. I won’t be surprised if a lucrative loop hole has been created for black marketers to profit from this long ago.
You have mentioned that currently you are working abroad, can you tell us abit about the difference between the two countries’ system?
I migrated overseas because an opportunity came along. I would not have left my country had it not been for the mass immigration of FT into Singapore. Local jobs are now taken over by FTs or gone offshore to cheaper country. I heard that more than 40% of our work force in Singapore are FTs now.
In Australia, there are laws to protect people against racism or bullying. When I started work in Australia, my first induction was work safe regulations. Work safe practices are in place in every organization against bullying and especially against tactics deployed by bosses like my ex-IT Indian director.
Have a look at the website from Work Safe which has a lot of advice to assist employees against work place bullying.
There are also free lawyers who can advice anyone if they require assistance, called legal aid and civil court that assist individual who were bullied or feel being victimized.
http://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/CA256DBB0022825D/HomePage?ReadForm&1=Home~&2=~&3=~
For example, in Australia, I had an issue with one of my house builder who insulted me because I was not happy with the renovation work he has done and wanted correction to be made. We went to VCAT to resolve the problem. In the end, I got an apology letter and was compensated on the renovation. I am thankful that there are such services available for citizenss and PR.
It all boils down to policies in respecting Human Rights !
Many Singaporeans currently are struggling with having too many foreign workers in the work place, what is your view on this?
The government should put audits against employers who are out to take advantage of our system to recruit FT. Instead I am seeing that transitioning.org is taking the initiative to publish company names when whistle blowers sound out the alarm. Why must it be local people to do so when it should be the people who open the flood gate?
End of interview
Editor’s Note: Francis has asked us not to name the company in case some of the local staff still working there will be implicated. This article will be forwarded to the Ministry of Manpower for their information and response.
