Striking Hard?

The "big" news this week is on a group of bus drivers going on strike to ask for more pay. This group of bus drivers is another batch of "foreign talent" who were unhappy about the pay raise, as they felt the company discriminated against other "foreign talents", so they went on strike on Monday. Coincidentally, the chief executive officer happened to be on vacation so this was handled by other officials.

 

Come to think of it, even though we do not really have a strong union that protests against everything, most of us are relatively well-behaved, as in we go to work, go home and so be it. We accept overtime work without pay, accept whatever benefits and welfare of the company even though some may not be as impressive, and accept whatever vacation we were given. Besides, all companies have to adhere to local labour law, which, in my opinion, is pretty reasonable where employees are concerned.

 

However, this group of strikers wanted to take matters into their own hands. Yes, no doubt in their own country, they could strike whenever they felt things were unfair. But this is not their own country. Here, strikes are illegal, and for a tranport company which falls under "essential services", all the more they will be charged and made examples of.

 

But this strike does serve as a wake-up call that we should not be taking things for granted. We live in a relatively sheltered society, which is why whenever things fall out of the norm, we kick up a big fuss as we think things like that can never happen. But the fact is, all these things do happen, and they happen a lot in other countries, just that many people here are too narrow to realise that.

 

Case in point - the recent blaring out of racial-related stuff on one's personal page that went viral, causing the perpetrator to get terminated. I am not saying that is the right thing to do. Yes, her act was downright insensitive, but then again, in other countries, there are worse stuff being written on walls, houses and yelling on the streets.

 

Yet those people take it in their strides and accept it as part and parcel of life. It is only here that people make a very big deal out of it because things like that have never happened, hence they should not happen and those who behaved "out of the ordinary" should be spat upon, and oh, everyone should know who this person is and what the person looked like so we could throw daggers at the picture.

 

Is this really necessary? Ok, the person had done a wrong thing, ok, the drivers are on strike, so what next? Striking is illegal here, and if their demands were given in, then everyone else would strike, but if their demands were not given, then what? Some people would then think we are an unfair society who only wanted our own way. Either way, it is hard to come to a consensus.

 

What will happen to the drivers in question? They may end up losing their jobs. They may even be charged. But whatever it is, I believe the authorities will make an example out of this case to prevent others from doing similar things. I hope this case comes to a conclusion soon as I am really interested to find out how the authorities will handle this.