Well, I got this on the news on the evening of 24th Nov.

Up to 19% pay cut for top civil servants; lower year-end bonus
Channel NewsAsia – Tuesday, November 25

SINGAPORE: Ministers and top civil servants will get a pay cut of up to 19 percent next year. The Civil Service is also reducing the year-end bonus payment for this year.

Top civil servants and ministers were supposed to get a pay rise in January next year to bring their salaries in line with private sector pay.

It was to be the third adjustment to bring public sector pay to 88 percent of the private sector benchmark, a move announced in April 2007.

The benchmark is set at two-thirds of the median pay of the top eight earners in each of the six sectors: multinational corporations, lawyers, bankers, accountants, local manufacturers and engineers.

In April 2007 and January this year, the salaries of top civil servants and ministers were revised to keep pace with soaring private sector salaries. But the Public Service Division said the 2009 salary revision for this group has now been deferred, in view of the clouded economic outlook.

In fact, the annual salary for top civil servants and ministers will fall next year to levels below April 2007, because close to 25 percent of their annual salary comprises variable payments linked to the GDP growth of Singapore and their salary will fall as long as the economy remains weak.

In 2009, the Prime Minister and President will see their annual salaries cut by 19 percent. Ministers and Senior Permanent Secretaries will see an 18 percent fall. The allowance for Members of Parliament will be cut by 16 percent.

Commenting on the pay cut, Mr Teo Chee Hean, Minister in charge of the Civil Service, said: “Public sector salaries follow the market up and down. The mechanism we introduced last year to link a significant proportion of the salary of senior civil servants to the performance of the economy is working as intended. This mechanism allows salaries to respond more rapidly to market conditions.”

The Public Service Division also said the Prime Minister has and will continue to donate all increases in his own salary after the April 2007 revisions, to good causes for five years.

Next year, the Prime Minister will actually see his salary fall to pre-revision levels.

As for civil servants such as teachers and police officers, they are getting a total of two months’ bonus payment this year, plus S$100 to S$300 paid out in July. This comprises the 13th month payment or Annual Wage Supplement and a one-month Annual Variable Component or AVC. The year-end AVC has been reduced to 0.5 month.

Last year, the total bonus payment was three months plus S$220, including a half-month Growth Bonus which was paid for the exceptional economic performance in 2007.

Public Service Division news release on civil servants’ annual pay

When my friend SanNiang told me of this news, he made a comment along the line of: some times, you got to be careful what you wished for.

How true! I supposed many people would have wished that the mini$ter$ cut their pay. But I doubt anyone of us wished for a recession and one of the worst economic crisis in our life time. And so we got what we wished for, but at what cost? And personally, I am not really interested in the degree of the cut, nor am I interested in debating if it is too much or too little. After all, they are probably still the most highly paid politicians in the world…

But on a broader basis, I think a lot of us – other than the most selfish Darwinist bastard – would rather our employers cut our pay than cut our jobs. Simply put, if there are 4 people in the company, and 1 headcount needs to be axed, I would rather the employer reduce 25% of my pay and keep all 4 headcounts. That way, at least the four of us would still have a salary to pay our bills and not need to feed on our own savings. Neither do we become an unemployment figure and a problem for the nation.

Retrenchment itself creates a social problem. Just the threat of retrenchment – and in effect unemployment – lowers consumer confidence and causes a reduction in spending. As for the people who are retrenched, they would now have to rely on their savings and there’s almost negligible spending whatsoever. Even if one gets a ‘golden handshake’ to go along with the retrenchment, they would be hoarding that money for no one knows for sure just how long before they become employed again. All of these goes on to make the existing ‘economic malaise’ worse. And when everyone stops spending, a recession becomes nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That being said, I doubt anyone would feel any remorse if the Darwinist bastards themselves are the ones that got axed. They can live by the principles they believed in, and die by them for all I cared. I considered that poetic – if not divine – justice.

Finally, I had an exchange of emails over Facebook with a friend last night. Apparently he is now working longer hours as the company has retrenched a guy and they have to cover his duties as well. They managed to identify a foreign fallen talent who isn’t suitable for his current post, and actually managed to prove his incompetence. Now, for our own survival I would suggest we identify and expose some of these ‘economic refugees’ as well.

They should be their own country’s unemployment problem. Not ours.

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Good reads:
The World of Fat4: Reaction of Singapore to DBS and NKF
Diary of A Singaporean Mind: Ho Ching takes a pay cut!!!
Information Read By Me: Video interview with Singaporeans from three different constituencies on their views of Town Councils’ loss of sinking funds